But only a coward would not. Because why had she made that decision? There was a disturbing thought. It could not alone be centred upon his virility, for the decision had been taken long before she had accompanied him to bed.

He was at the house, and George Frederick was hurrying down to take his bridle as he dismounted. Marguerite's horse already waited at the steps. 'The mistress says you must go to her, Captin,' George Frederick looked embarrassed. 'If you please.'

' 'Tis a lecture you'll be receiving, Mr Hilton,' Dutton remarked. The overseer had come round the corner of the house unobserved. 'For losing your phlegm at the execution.'

Kit stared at him. 'Aye,' he said. 'I have something to learn about the planting business.'

Dutton grinned. 'You'll not find a better teacher than Mrs Templeton. Ah, I must apologize, sir. I had meant Mistress Hilton, had I not?'

Kit went up the steps and handed his hat to the waiting girl. The house was quiet, and cool, and sweet smelling. The house was the Green Grove he loved. The house and its inmate. But to come back here and claim that inmate, he must ride the fields, and the people in them.

'Where is the mistress?' he asked.

'She taking she bath, Captin,' the girl said, and simpered.

Kit nodded, climbed the stairs to the bedchamber used for her tub; it contained nothing else save a gigantic mirror and a low table. From behind the closed door there came the sounds of splashing and the chatter of the girls. But Martha Louise waited outside the door. For him. Because as he approached she knocked, and the sounds within immediately died.

'The master is here,' she said.

Hands clapped, and the door opened. Five girls came running out, their hands still wet, and their dresses also soaked. They giggled and bowed, and scattered towards the servants' staircase.

'You is to go in, Captin,' Martha Louise said, and drew the back of her hand across her nose; she seemed to have caught a cold.

Kit nodded, hesitated for a last moment, and then stepped through the door, which promptly closed behind him.

'I am the victor,' Marguerite said. She sat in the huge tin tub, which was some four feet in diameter, and round, and filled with bubbling suds. Her hair was bound up on the top of her head to expose that splendid, strong face, but for the rest she was almost lost to sight beneath the bubbles. 'Pour some sangaree, my darling.'

Kit obeyed; the jug and the glasses waited on the low table.

'Now give me a sip.'

He knelt beside the tub, held the glass to her lips. She drank, and smiled at him. 'Did I ever tell you how happy I am, Kit?' she asked. 'Just to look at you, and know you are there. Just to know that this body belongs to you, and will always do so.'

Her eyes held his. She was fighting a battle, with all the intensity of her body, of her mind, with all the power that she could command. But it was a battle for which she had prepared, for at least a month. Whereas he had stumbled into an ambush, unawares.

Nor would she admit less than a total victory. 'And as I won our race,' she said, 'I claim a forfeit. A duty of you, my sweet. I have sent my girls away. I would have you bathe me. Would you not do that, as a forfeit?'

He placed the glass on the floor, empty. As he had drunk he had tasted her perfume, or so it seemed. Now he took off his coat and pushed up his sleeves. Because how much did he want to touch that body? How much had everything he had seen and heard and smelt this morning made him want to renew his possession of that body.

And besides, she was the victor.

'What's this?' Kit stepped out of the front door, flicking his boots with his riding whip; it was remarkable how easily one picked up the habits of the planters and the overseers. 'A carriage?'

'Did you not know that we possessed a carriage?' Marguerite smiled. 'It is housed in that shed yonder.'

'Then you do not mean to go aback today?' But now he looked at her more closely he could see that indeed she did not, for she had abandoned her divided skirt and her boots and her tricorne in favour of a dark blue taffeta gown decorated with cream silk cuffs and matching bows, and wore lace on her head, while her hair was dressed, although loose. And she carried a fan and a cane.

'A surprise,' she said. 'Do you not realize, my sweet, that for six whole months I have not been to St John's? The only occasions on which I have left my plantation have been to visit Goodwood. But now ... now that I am a bride of a fortnight and more, I thought we might venture forth and show ourselves to the idle populace.'

'St John's?' His heart bounded at the thought. Now why? Had he then been a prisoner? Oh, indeed, in the most splendid prison imaginable. But now he was more master of his surroundings; practice had even taught him to sit a horse at more than a walk. The flogging of a recalcitrant slave no longer had him trembling, as the sight of the blacks' nudity and desires no longer aroused his own manhood. He had realized that he could reconcile his present position with his innermost ambitions. For the slaves on Green Grove were undoubtedly healthy, and cared for, and in so far as a slave could ever be happy, they were happy. Certainly their lot seemed infinitely preferable to those of any other plantation, nor did it seem to interrupt their concept of themselves to be treated as animals. Because at the very least they were treated as valuable animals, and in that sense protected from the worst evils of climate and human frailty. Whereas on most other plantations in Antigua their lot fluctuated between total neglect and a constant apprehension of the worst of human vices, which reached out to encompass all ages and both sexes, and varied from lust to sadistic brutality.

And for looking after her slaves as she cared for her horses and indeed for her cane itself, Marguerite was feared and disliked by her fellows. Well, then, he was proud to stand at her side, now and always.

'As the idea pleases you, my sweet,' she said, 'I suggest you sit beside me. I shall be attending the auction, Dutton, as I am going that way. You will join me with the wagon in an hour.'

'Yes, Mistress Hilton,' the overseer said, and touched his hat. A man to watch, Dutton, with his constant smile, and his determination to take orders from none but his mistress.

As Marguerite had noticed. She settled herself comfortably as the carriage moved off behind George Frederick and the liveried coachman. 'A drive, with my husband, on a cool morning. Is that not a delight?'

'Indeed it is. I wonder that you spare the time.'

'The cane is nearly ripe,' she said. 'There is little harm can come to it, now. Next month we shall grind. Then, then you shall see us labour. And you shall labour yourself; I would like you to supervise the boiling.'

'Willingly,' he agreed. 'If I could be at all sure how to go about it.'

'I will have Passmore instruct you. But you must be sure that you understand what you are about. Boiling is a time of great effort, and not all are willing to give that effort. You must drive them to it, Kit. I would estimate that you have now completed what we might call your probationary period as master of Green Grove. Now I would have you be master. You understand my meaning?'

'As well as I can.'

'I doubt you do,' she said. 'The blacks will not go against you. They dare not, as they know I ride at your side. I would have you be more assertive with the whites. Perhaps they find it hard to consider you as their superior, as when you came here you appeared no more than their equal.'

'I was no more than their equal.'

'You underestimate yourself. Life had perhaps treated you unkindly, but you should never forget that your background is infinitely superior to that of any poor white. Your grandfather was Governor of Tortuga.'

Kit burst out laughing. 'Really, dear one, you must have forgotten that heap of rubble, that colony of cutthroats. And it had improved since my grandfather's day.'

'None the less,' she insisted, with unusual heat. 'Anthony Hilton was a colonial governor, and will remain forever in the history books as a colonial governor. I would have you bear that always in mind, Kit. As for the other, it would be a good thing were you to give one of these fools a proper taste of your character. They know you only by reputation, and your one aggressive act since coming to Antigua earned you a beating from my father's blacks. Believe me, I see no reproach for you in that. You were attacked from behind and by numbers too considerable even for you to manage, but still I would have you remind these louts of what danger they play with when they mock you. I do not think it would be sound policy for me openly to encourage you to brawl in front of them, so I make my request now, and trust that you will act upon it in due course.'

'But Marguerite, darling,' he said. 'Why should I? I assure you that their remarks or sly grins bother me not in the least. And I would really like to turn my back on violence.'

'No man can do that, and be a man, Kit,' she said. 'And if their pinpricks do not bother you, be sure they bother me. Would you have your wife insulted, even at second hand? You are master of Green Grove, Kit. No law can touch you were you to kill a man in the main street of St John's. I give you my word on that. You have but to act the part.'

She turned away from him, almost violently, to signify the conversation was at an end. So now she would have me kill a man, he thought, no doubt just to prove to herself that I am capable of that. Sometimes he almost hated her, a quick eruption of temper, which he knew was mainly the result of her inexpressible arrogance. But did she not only wish that he would show a similar awareness of his own power and superiority? Was that unreasonable in a woman, and such a woman, born to such power and such dominance? And would he not be a fool to risk her disrespect, when her love was all that sustained him?

And besides, how much was he wrapped up in the words, her love. Already, twenty-one unforgettable nights, when only exhausted sleep had separated their mouths, their bodies, their very hearts. He had but to think of her, of her legs and her belly, of her ever-damp love forest, of her swelling breasts, of her always-hard nipples, of her ever-welcoming lips, and his love was renewed, again and again and again.

He leaned across the seat and picked up her hand. Her head started to turn and then checked.

'Be sure, my darling, darling Marguerite,' he promised. 'No one shall ever again offer you the slightest insult, whether direct, or implied, or through your husband. At least in my hearing or to my knowledge.'

Now her head did turn, and she smiled at him. 'You are the best and truest of men, dear Kit. I knew I had but to mention the matter to have you understand.' She blew him a kiss. 'Now let us purchase ourselves some lusty blacks.'

For they had arrived in St John's, and were already rumbling down the main street, bringing people out of shop doorways and to their windows, for there were not that many carriages in Antigua. And once the couple were identified, the spectators grew. Captain Hilton and his bride. Or would it be more correct to say, Mistress Hilton and her husband, Kit wondered? But then, she had just taught him the way to alter their positions. It was a way he knew well, even if he had not thought to pursue it in these delightful surroundings. But was any aspect of life any different to any other?

George Frederick pulled on the reins, and Henry Bruce came round to release the steps and hold the door for his mistress. They were outside the only building in town which approximated the Ice House in size, and already a crowd was gathered at the steps, gossiping and exchanging views, and prospects for the sale as well, for if the planters came to buy in batches from ten to fifty, there were invariably some slaves who would be cast aside for a minor defect, and these would be sold cheaply; it remained always the ambition of the poor whites to own at least one black, if only to establish a superiority over their fellows.

But they separated into two sides of a lane quickly enough, nodding and touching their hats to Mistress Hilton, and winking and grinning at Kit, whom they had known in less prosperous days. He prayed that there would be no ribald comment, lest Marguerite should feel that she was being insulted, but this day the remarks were confined to congratulations.

The door closed behind them, and they were in a vast warehouse, well enough lit by great skylights in the roof, and large enough to permit the air to circulate from the jalousied shutters over the lower windows, but yet containing to an incredibly distressing degree the scent of humanity, anxious, lustful, and more than anything else, afraid. Already there were more than a dozen planters here, and already the slaves were grouped at the far end, an entire shipload of them, perhaps two hundred and fifty from an original cargo of four hundred, Kit realized with a turning belly. They gazed about themselves in fear and amazement, happy enough at the moment to be off the dread ship, where they would have been confined for several weeks like living corpses already in their coffins, and fortified as well by the swallow of rum which would have been given to each of them before entering the auction hall.

'Marguerite, how good to see you at an auction.' Edward Chester, as bustlingly exuberant as ever. 'Can this mean that you are once more going to be seen socially? My word, Kit, old fellow, but should you have accomplished that miracle, you will be the most popular fellow in Antigua.'

'Am I not already?' Kit asked, quietly.

Chester, bending over Marguerite's hand, straightened and frowned. Marguerite also frowned, for just a moment, and then gave a quick and delighted smile.

'Indeed, you shall see me socially, Edward,' she said. 'If only for a short while.' She stepped round him and made her way towards the blacks.

Chester removed his tricorne to scratch the back of his close-cropped head. 'Now what the devil did she mean by that?'

'I should ask her, old fellow,' Kit said. 'Whenever she can spare you a moment.'

'The devil,' Chester said. 'A month's bedding that gorgeous creature has changed your stride, by God.'

'By God, it has,' Kit agreed. 'And you'd do well to keep a civil tongue in your head, dear Edward, or be sure I shall twist it out for you.'

He followed his wife. By Christ, had that been Christopher Hilton speaking? By Christ, how Jean would laugh. If he still lived. Naught had been heard of that carefree buccaneer in a year. But Daniel Parke would also laugh, with sheer delight. And Agrippa? Or Lilian Christianssen? He checked, frowning. And then squared his shoulders, and walked on. Was he then to undertake his every action in fear or desire of approbation or criticism? There was only one person in the entire world that Kit Hilton needed to please, and that was no hardship.

'Stand back. Stand back.' The auctioneer was snapping at the men who had quickly gathered about the only lady in the room. 'Give Mrs Templeton space.'

Marguerite all but froze him with a stare. 'Mrs Hilton, Darring. And by God if you forget again you'll have no more of my business.'

'My apologies, Mrs Hilton. My apologies. I am such a

thoughtless fellow. And the Captain is here as well. Good morning, Captain Hilton. Good morning to you.'

'And to you, Darring.' Kit leaned on his cane and watched Marguerite step up to the blacks.

'This fellow,' she said, regarding a large young man, who rolled his eyes as he gazed at what must have been the most splendid apparition he had ever seen. And then jerked as Marguerite poked him in the belly with her cane. But his breathing remained even. 'Your mouth, man, open your mouth,' she said, slapping him lightly on the cheek with the cane. His jaw dropped open, and he pulled back his lips to reveal a splendid set of teeth.

'He's a right buck, Mrs Hilton,' Darring said anxiously. 'You'll find no defects in him.'

'No doubt,' Marguerite agreed. But she intended to be sure for herself. The top of the cane lightly touched the man's penis, to jerk away at the first reaction. 'Aye. He seems fit enough. Now what of that woman?' She moved along the line, to repeat the careless yet knowledgeable examination, and Kit felt his belly roll some more. Suddenly the heat and the stench were oppressive. And he was no more than a spectator, here. Marguerite needed none of his assistance in choosing her slaves.

He walked to the back of the room, and thence on to the steps outside.

'Why, Kit,' Philip Warner said. The Deputy Governor had just arrived. 'Can you find nothing suitable?'

'I am afraid as yet I lack the experience to make a decision either way, sir,' Kit said. 'But Marguerite seems to find them much to her requirements.'

'Marguerite, here,' Philip cried. 'By God, that is good news. You'll excuse me.' He hurried through the door.

'Too much for your stomach, eh, Captain Hilton?' Dutton asked, dismounting from his horse and giving the reins to the slave who had ridden in with him. 'Aye, a slave auction is not the prettiest of occasions.'

The crowd outside the auction house had not diminished, and many were grinning. In sympathy or with contempt? But it would not have mattered which. Because how angry Kit was, on a sudden. With Dutton? Hardly. With Marguerite, for being able to treat other human beings, however inferior, as lumps of flesh? Or with himself, for loving her at all? For knowing that his love, allied to his ambition, would keep him at her side, always?

But Dutton was here, and Dutton had a considerable history of sly contempt as regards his new master, and Dutton was the man Marguerite had spoken of, in the carriage.

Kit swept his hand, up from the thigh, and backwards, slashing across the overseer's face, cutting his lip and bringing blood smarting to his chin, sending him reeling across the step and to the earth three feet below, with a jar which all but knocked the breath from his body.

His gasp was scarcely louder than that of the assembly. They gazed from the fallen man to Kit, and back again in utter consternation.

'You'd do best to keep a civil tongue in your head, Dutton, when addressing me in the future,' Kit said, and turned away. He walked up the street, in the direction of the harbour, and the ships, and the breeze, and the life for which he had been intended, and heard a sudden shout.

He stopped, and turned. Dutton had scrambled to his feet and pulled from its scabbard the double-barrelled blunderbuss which always rested by his saddle. Now he uttered a bellow of rage, and came down the dusty road, shouldering people apart, and none would make a move to stop him. This was overseer against master, but also planter, of however inferior a species, against buccaneer. And now the shouts and the noise had brought even more people on to the street, and filled the windows, and the doorway of the auction house itself. But for Kit there was only Dutton, slowing now, trying to control his breathing, the firearm thrust forward, the muzzle moving from side to side. There could be no mistaking his intention; his face was deep red, and his eyes stared.

'Roll me in the street, by God,' he said. 'Roll me in the street, you pirating bastard. You bitch's litter. I'll blow you into little bits.'

He was thirty feet away, feet braced as he brought up the blunderbuss. 'Or would you like to start running?' he invited.

It occurred to Kit that he was about to die. That he had no choice. To run from Dutton would mean the end of his life, as Christopher Hilton of Green Grove, just as much as if he stood here and took the charge. But to die, at this moment, when life was opening so entrancingly in front of him ... 'Kit.'

He half turned his head. Agrippa stood on the side of the street not twenty feet away, and held a pistol. Now he tossed the weapon through the air in a gentle parabola. Kit leapt to one side, and the blunderbuss exploded. The noise was tremendous, and a stinging pain in his left arm told him that at least one of the pellets had struck home.

'Fight me, would you, scum,' Dutton shouted, turning and sighting again, with his undischarged barrel looming large and round and deadly.

But Kit had reached the pistol, scooped it up, turned, and sighted all in a single movement, as he and Jean had practised so often in their youths. And as the pistol came into line with Dutton's body, long before the overseer could fire a second time, it had exploded. The bang of the blunderbuss followed half a second later, but Dutton was already dead and his muzzle was pointing aimlessly at the sky.

The sound of the three shots continued to echo over the houses, only slowly fading, while an immense hush clamped on the street and the town itself.

Agrippa was first to speak. 'By Christ,' he said. 'You have lost none of your skill.'

'And yet it was a lucky shot,' Kit muttered, and looked at the blood trailing down his sleeve.

The crowd surged forward, to stand around the dead man and stare at him in horror, to gaze at Kit in wonderment.

'Did you see that?' they asked each other. 'A single shot, fired without a proper stance? Man, did you see that?'

Did you see that? Kit gazed over their heads at Lilian, standing on the steps of her father's house, staring at him with a stricken expression. But surely she had been looking from the start, and seen that he had fired in self-defence, that it had been his life or Dutton's, that Dutton had been out of his mind with anger. If she did not know these things, then must she be convinced of their truth.

He stepped towards her, and was checked by the voice behind him.

'Kit. Kit? Oh, my God, you are wounded.' Marguerite touched his arm, allowed the blood to dribble over her glove. 'We must have you back to the plantation.' She pulled the skirt of her gown up, and ripped a length from her petticoat, while the onlookers gaped, and tied the linen round the wound. 'Oh, Kit, what a man you are.'

He looked down at her. 'I but obeyed your instructions. I had not expected it to go this far.'

Her head came up as she looked at him. 'I saw the shot,' she said. 'I reached the doorway as you fired. I have seen nothing like that in my life. No one on this island can have ever seen that.'

'And suppose I told you that it was no more than luck? I took no proper aim. I but wished to make him miss a second time, so that I could close with him.'

Her face broke into that unforgettable smile. 'You made him miss, Kit,' she said. 'You made him miss. By God, there will not be a man on this island will ever dare look you in the face again, unless invited. By God, Kit, but now I am the proudest woman on earth. Come, we will get you home and tend to that wound.'

The crowd was parting to let the carriage through, and a moment later he was inside and staring at them as they stared at him; Philip Warner stood on the steps of the auction house, Edward Chester at his side. They looked as if they had seen the devil himself. As perhaps they had. Certainly that had been the expression in Lilian's eyes. But when he looked to the Christianssens' house again, it was lost to sight as the carriage thundered out of town.

'Did you secure any of the blacks?' he asked. How desperate he was to return to normal. As if life could ever be normal again.

Marguerite continued to smile. 'I have left a bid on some twelve of them. Obviously I will not be at the auction.' She touched her lip in a gesture of impatience. 'I shall have to arrange Dutton's burial. I had all but forgotten in my concern over your wound. But your wound must be attended first. I will send Passmore to see to Dutton.'

'Will not the other overseers hate me for killing one of them?'

'Oh, indeed they shall,' she agreed. 'But if it is any comfort to you, you may be sure that they hated you before, for being set above them, as they have always hated me, for being their employer. There is not a planter in this island who is not heartily loathed by every white person of inferior station.'

'And now I have joined the minority,' he muttered.

'As you were always intended, by nature and by me, to do," she said. 'I did not elect to fall in love with you entirely because I hoped and expected that you would fill my womb with eager joy, darling Kit. For near a year I had lived alone on Green Grove, the mistress of all I surveyed, and more, the daughter of the Deputy Governor, but a short ride away from all the succour I could possibly need, and yet I was daily growing more and more aware of my position, a mere woman amongst so many jealous and eager men. I noticed it in their gaze, in the manner with which they would appear at the house, uninvited and unexpected. And they all have wives, you know. But I could read their minds as if their very brains had been exposed to my gaze. Here is a lonely woman, they thought to themselves, young and beautiful and healthy, but none the less lonely and alone; surely she must soon seek to share her bed, and he who is available at the decisive moment may well find himself cock of the walk. And from such hopes and ambitions, Kit, there soon stem plans and plots.'

He stared at her. 'You wanted me to kill Dutton.'

'He was the worst of them, certainly. But he was not alone in his insolence. Believe me, Kit, I do not trade in violence. I abhor war, for the damage it can do. But I know enough of life to understand that one example, if properly carried out, may save a world of trouble.' She smiled at his frown. 'You find me too straight a woman. I sometimes think. You would prefer me to blush and dissemble and shrink away from manly talk and manly behaviour. But would you wish that, Kit? Could you repose so much confidence in me had you the slightest doubt as to my character?' She kissed her finger, and laid it on his lips. 'I doubt that, somehow.' And a moment later she was staring ahead of the carriage in a frown of irritation. 'Now what in the name of God troubles him? The news cannot have reached Green Grove already.'

For Passmore was whipping his horse towards them.

'Mrs Hilton,' he gasped. 'Thank God you elected to return early, madam ..." he paused to pant.

'For God's sake,' Marguerite cried. 'We have had crisis enough for one day. What ails you, man?'

'Martha Louise, madam,' he gasped. 'Maurice Peter brought her to my attention, today. He did not know how to approach you, madam.'

'Martha Louise?' Marguerite frowned. 'You had best speak plain. She has been stealing?'

'No, madam. Not Martha Louise. She'd not do that, madam.'

'Then get to the point. God damn you,' Marguerite shouted.

'The marks, madam. She has come out in the stains.'

Marguerite stared at him, her brows slowly knitting, her mouth slowly clamping into a hard line. When she spoke her voice was low. 'Give rein, George Frederick. Give rein.'

'Yes, ma'am,' the black said, and scattered his whip across the horses' backs. The carriage jerked forward and rumbled down the road, throwing Kit and Marguerite back in their seats, while Passmore wheeled his horse and rode behind.

'What did he mean, the stains?' Kit asked, when he had got his breath back.

'Isn't it strange how troubles never go in ones,' Marguerite mused. 'Stains on the skin. Discolouring of the flesh. It is the first sign of leprosy.'

Kit sat bolt upright. 'Leprosy?'

'Oh, do not be alarmed,' she said, a little irritably. 'It is a common enough occurrence amongst the blacks. I suspect they breed it in their filthy habits. But amongst one of my house servants ... that has never happened before. And yet, her nose has been dribbling these past few weeks.'

'That is a symptom?'

'It can be. The marks are more positive.'

'What will you do?'

She tapped her chin with her forefinger. 'Have the entire place fumigated, you may be sure of that. And immediately. Believe me, Kit, there is naught for us to be alarmed about. No doubt the disease can afflict white people, but be sure that it is first of all necessary for them to exist in conditions which may breed the horror.'

'I meant, what will you do about the girl?' 'Martha Louise,' she said to herself. 'I like the girl. You know that, Kit?'

'I do. Can she not be cared for?'

She glanced at him. 'No. No, there is the terrible thing about leprosy. There is no cure, no treatment. Not even any alleviation of the condition. She must go across the water.'

'Across the water?' Kit asked. 'I do not understand.'

'Have you never wondered to what purpose I put that island of mine?' she asked. 'You should know that it is not in my nature to waste land, or labour.' She smiled. 'It is another manifestation of my peculiar methods which so upset my fellow planters. On any other estate Martha Louise would be taken to sea and thrown overboard with weights tied to her ankles. And then forgotten. I cannot bring myself so to destroy otherwise faithful servants whose only fault is the contraction of an unforeseeable horror. So I send them to the island.'

'Them?'

'I told you, it is a common enough complaint.' She sighed. 'Poor child, she will be upset.'

The carriage was hurtling through the gates, and a moment later it drew up in a cloud of dust before the main steps to the Great House. Marguerite got down without waiting to be assisted, and ran up the stairs, while Kit followed as quickly as he could, quite forgetting the sharp pain in his shoulder and the trickle of blood which had again started to course down his sleeve.

The house slaves were gathered in the dining-room, anxiously awaiting their mistress. They looked terrified.

'Where is she?' Marguerite demanded.

'In the pantry, ma'am,' Maurice Peter said.

Marguerite walked through the doorway without a moment's hesitation. Kit did hesitate, and then followed her. Martha Louise had been sitting on a straight chair, her shoulders bowed, but at the entrance of her mistress she sprang up. Her eyes were filled with tears, and her face about as woebegone as Kit had ever seen.

'Mistress ...'

'Take off your chemise,' Marguerite commanded. The girl obeyed, lifting the garment over her head and letting it drop to the floor behind her. Marguerite went closer. Kit remained just inside the doorway, staring at the thin body, aware that the rest of the servants were crowding behind him. Marguerite touched the girl's thigh, ran her gloved finger down the side of her leg. There was undoubtedly a discoloration on the dark flesh there, a slight roughness; and now that Kit looked more closely he could see that there were other, similar marks, one stretching from her right breast almost down to her navel, and another on her right leg.

Marguerite straightened. 'You will launch the boat, Maurice Peter.'

For a moment there was absolute silence, then Martha Louise uttered a most terrible wail. 'Aieeee. Mistress, I ain't sick, mistress. There ain't nothing wrong with me, mistress. I feeling well, mistress. I feeling better than ever, mistress.'

Marguerite stared at the girl for a moment, and then turned and left the room. 'Be sure you wear gloves, Maurice Peter.' She paused at the foot of the stairs to the upper floor, stripped off her own gloves, and dropped them on the floor. 'Burn those,' she commanded. 'And bring me a drink.'

'Sangaree, mistress?'

'Rum,' she said. 'Bring me a glass of rum.' She climbed the stairs.

Kit recollected himself and ran behind her, caught her in the doorway to their bedroom. 'Marguerite, I have just remembered. There is a disease to which the Negroes are subject, called the yaws, which also leads to a roughness of the skin, to a discoloration, but it is not fatal. Can we not wait, to see, if the girl has indeed got leprosy?'

Marguerite shrugged her arm free, and sat on the bed. 'No,' she said. 'I dare not take that risk. By sending her across the water now I may save the disease from spreading. What am I saying? I will save the disease from spreading. She may have the yaws, Kit. Then truly she is the least fortunate of humans. But I cannot take the risk.'

'Yet once she is sent to the island, she will certainly contract leprosy from the others there.'

'She will. So let us suppose she already suffers from that disease.'

He stared at her. 'Have you been there yourself?'

'We take them food and drink once a week. Most of them are too far gone to care for themselves. We leave the supplies on the beach. They know better than to approach us, but they stand at a distance and watch us, and ask after their relatives on the plantation.' Her head came up, and he saw that her eyes too were filled with tears. 'Have you ever seen a sufferer from leprosy, Kit?'

'No.'

'It is the most terrible thing you can imagine,' she whispered. 'They rot away. Literally, Kit. Their fingers and toes. Their noses. Their entire skin. And all the time the disease is at work within them, and they know that their vital organs are also just rotting away. Christ, my poor Martha Louise.'

'Yet you will not even have her put aside here for a week, to see if the blotches grow or fade,' he said.

Marguerite stood up. 'No,' she said. 'No, I will not. I said, I cannot take the risk. I cannot take the risk of infecting the rest of my slaves. I cannot take the risk of infecting my overseers and their families. I cannot take the risk of infecting you and me, my darling. But most of all I cannot take the risk of infecting my child.'

'Your ...' his jaw sagged open.

'I would not have told you now, but for this,' she said. 'We have been married only a month, and I have not bled. So that perhaps is the least conclusive of tests, one month. Yet never have I missed even one month in my entire life before. And besides, I know. You have accomplished all that I could have asked of you, this month, Kit, beginning with our first coupling and reaching on to this morning, when you showed the world your mettle. No, no. I will risk none of that, Kit.'

7

The Choice

There was no breeze, and the smoke, belching from the chimney which dominated the Green Grove boiling house, rose into the air like a column, three hundred feet, before spreading itself, in layer after layer, until it obliterated the entire morning sky, hanging over the plantation, and the sea, and the leper colony, like some portent of inescapable doom.

But rather was it a portent of inescapable wealth. It was a sweet-smelling smoke, which titillated the nostrils as it filled the lungs. And beneath it, in the furnace that was Green Grove, the smell of boiling sugar-cane, and then boiling sugar, and then boiling molasses, filled the air, the mind, the body, even the soul. During the grinding season a normal diet was impossible; everything tasted sweet. But then during the grinding season nothing was normal.

Gone was the siesta considered so important to Europeans; even at two in the afternoon, when the sun ruled the heavens, the work went on. Although not even the sun, a Caribbean sun, huge and round and fiery and imperious, could penetrate the smoke blanket which covered the plantation. The sun could do no more than add its heat to the inferno below. Yet it was scarcely noticed.

The plantation looked as if the Spaniards had landed and carried fire and sword from one end of it to the next, saving only the houses in an act of unusual magnanimity. For before grinding the canefields must be burned, to remove the possibility of snakes or noxious insects. Thus over a month earlier had the great smoke clouds rolled across the compounds, and the brilliant white sheets become dotted with black wisps of ash, which dissolved into filthy smudges whenever touched. The house servants had been the first to find their work doubled, as they washed and scrubbed and cleaned.

The fires smouldering, the fields had been assaulted with knife and cutlass. Kit and Passmore had themselves led the van of the charge, while their slaves rolled behind like an army, shouting and cheering, marshalled by the remaining overseers, driven always by the ear-splitting crack of the whip, and followed by the squealing axles of the carts on to which the cut stalks must be placed.

Once this work had been properly commenced, Kit could leave it to Passmore and attend to the factory. For the previous six weeks this had been in preparation, with grease and polish, to take away the rust and the faults which would have accumulated during the growing season. Now it had been put to work. The selected slaves, great strong young fellows, had mounted the treadmill, the signal had been given, the whips had seared their backs, and the huge wheel had started its ponderous turn, rumbling as it did so, setting into motion the rollers and the crushers by a spindle and gear-box, to spread the creaking grind across the morning.

Then it had been time to light the fires. Special fuel had been stored for this purpose over the previous weeks, dried wood and straw. By now the first of Passmore's cartloads were already rumbling down the track from the canefields, heaped with cut stalks, already turning from green to yellow, still showing the scorch marks from the fire; the casualties, despatched from the battlefield, where the dreadful work of execution went on and on and on.

The carts were drawn by mules bred especially for this purpose, up to the raised ground behind the factory, where the giant shutes awaited. Here also there waited another regiment of slaves, controlled and marshalled by Allingham, the second overseer, and armed with spades and pitchforks. These dug into the cane stalks and tumbled them down the shute, smoothed to a treacherous perfection, into the first of the rollers, this one a system of interlocking iron teeth, which seized the cane and crackled it into firewood. This dreadful sound rose even above the whine of the treadmill and the gears, while every so often a stalk escaped, to fall over the side and arrest the process with an almost human scream of tortured metal. To discourage this were four picked hands, for time was not to be lost repairing machinery during grinding. Here was a dangerous job, and Kit could still remember, at his first grinding, the truly human scream which had followed the disappearance of old Charles Arthur's hand and forearm, his fingers caught by the ceaselessly rolling drums.

That poor fellow had died from loss of blood and shock. But then, would he not have been disposed of as useless, anyway?

And soon forgotten, as the mangled cane was thrown out the far side, on to another shute, being forced through another set of rollers, these no more than drums, touching each other as they rotated, which seized the shattered stalks and compressed them, causing the first drops of the precious white liquid which would eventually be sugar to drip into the gutters beneath.

But still the cane's ordeal was unfinished, for there was yet another shute, and yet a third set of rollers to be negotiated, these so close and fine that their squealing creak against each other dominated all other sounds inside the factory. Here the last of the juice was squeezed free, and the stalks were left no more than wisps of useless wood.

Yet not so useless that they could still not be used. A sugar plantation produced its own fuel, its own energy, wherever possible. Beneath the last of the rollers was an immense pit, into which the stalks fell. But here again was a platoon of slaves with pitchforks and spades, for off the side of the pit there led a single channel, to the fires, and in this gully there were carts and sweating labourers. The stalks were loaded on to the carts, and carried along this surely accurate replica of hell to the great furnaces, and there consumed, for once the fires were started they would feed on anything combustible, even still-damp fibres.

This truly was the end of their journey, until they were belched forth to darken the sky as black smoke. But the juice had only just begun its travels. The gutters from beneath the rollers and crushers ran down to the vats, huge iron tubs set exactly over the never cooling furnaces beneath. Here the liquid bubbled and leapt, a witch's brew, constantly being combed through with nets at the end of long sticks held by the factory hands. Beyond were more gutters, more cauldrons, more furnaces, and not until Reed, the factory overseer, was satisfied was the cane juice allowed to flow off into the cooling vats. These were also set over a pit, and these had perforated bottoms. For as the liquid cooled, while the precious crystals would cling to the sides of the vats, the still molten molasses would slip through the sieves and into the fresh vats waiting beneath.

The manufacture, storage, and bunging of the hogsheads was a separate industry in itself, employing another horde of slaves under the supervision of Webster, the carpenter. And always there were the book-keepers, commanded by their head, Burn, a dapper little fellow who wore spectacles, and was never to be discovered without a note pad in one hand and a pencil in the other, listing, evaluating, checking.

Nor was even the complete hogshead the end of the process, for the molasses in turn were drawn off down yet other gutters to yet other vats, and these were kept simmering, while the additives were carefully measured, for Green Grove, like every sugar plantation, manufactured its own rum. Here waited the chemist, Norton, a happy fellow who had to spend most of his day tasting the slowly fermenting liquid; there was more red in his nose than ever came from the sun.

But perhaps Norton was symptomatic of the whole, because, remarkably, grinding was a happy time. There was not a soul on the plantation, from Kit himself down to the smallest Negro boy or girl able to drag at the bagasse, who did not work harder in this month than throughout the rest of the year taken together. And yet, the change from the unending field labour, the making and mending of roads, the back-breaking weeding, the repairs to houses, was itself pleasant, and during the grinding season there was no daily punishment parade. The whips cracked ceaselessly, and the men and women worked until they dropped, but they knew better than to attempt any insubordination or obvious slackness, for the ships were coming, and would be in St John's on the appointed days to load, and the life of a slave, often valuable enough as part of the estate's assets, became trivial if set against any damage to the crop.

From the smallest, to Kit himself. He stood by the vats, gazing at the bubbling liquid, while the heat from the fires rose around him. Surely, when he went to hell, because planters no less than buccaneers must be destined for hell and he was now astride both professions, he would find it positively cool. And scarcely less demoniac. He would only hope that he found it no less exciting.

He found all of planting exciting. He wondered if, like Morgan, his people had really been farmers before politics and economics had driven them across the sea. The Warners had certainly farmed. So perhaps much of his happiness came from the obvious delight he could see on Marguerite's face, in her entire demeanour, as she watched the crop grow, as she inspected every little ratoon, the name given to the shoots cut from the older plants, which were in turn replanted to provide each successive crop. And then, the climax of grinding.

He watched her coming towards him. Was this the magnificent creature he had first loved on the hill in Tortuga, and in whose slender white arms he renewed his love night after night? She wore only a muslin gown, without a petticoat or a stocking, with no more than a single chemise beneath, and this was more sweat-soaked than the gown itself. They folded themselves together, and wrapped themselves around her legs and her thighs and her shoulders, clung to her breasts, left her all but naked to every gaze. Her hair was invisible, piled on top of her head and lost to sight beneath a bandanna which was itself concealed beneath the wide-brimmed straw hat. Yet sweat dribbled out from the kerchief, and furrowed its way down those smooth cheeks to hang from that pointed, determined chin.

Her fingers were black with dust and grease and dirt. Dirt smudged her face, streaked the skirt of her gown. But she laughed as she approached, and signalled George Frederick forward; if the house servants played no part in the actual grinding, it was their duty to care for their master and mistress. George Frederick carried the inevitable tray of iced sangaree, from which Marguerite now took two glasses, one to hand to her husband. 'The thousand,' she shouted above the grind of the machinery. 'Burn has totalled a thousand hogsheads. By Christ, but we have never reached the thousand before.'

He drank, and felt the chill liquid tracing every vein in his body. 'I promised.'

'And you deliver what you promise.' She stood close to him, put both arms around his naked waist, as filled with sweat as her own, and hugged him. 'Aye. That you do. Did I not love you, Kit. Did I hate the very ground on which you walk, then I would still be happy that I chose you to manage my estate. Every year, without exception, the crop has grown, and grown, and grown. But a thousand ... if we add every plantation on this island together, I'd wager we shall not find that total. When Papa hears of this, he will go green.' Once again she hugged him. 'Come to the house. We shall celebrate.'

Which they did, often enough. It was part of their life, to find causes for celebration. Often enough, their mutual happiness embraced the entire island. For Marguerite, having spent four years as the wife of a man old enough to be her father, and another year as a widow, considered that she had very nearly been cheated of her true deserts as a woman. Now Green Grove Great House was often enough a blaze of light and laughter and music, and dancing and love-making and scandal, over which she presided with the conscious grace of being superior to everything she overlooked. And with an indulgent eye, as well, to every young woman, such as Mary Chester, a perennial flirt, who sidled up to Kit and invited his arms around her waist. There was no waist around which his arm would stay, save hers. She was the victor. She had claimed her prize on the first morning of their married life, and renewed her claim, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

As a woman, she gratified his every whim, no doubt because whatever he desired appealed to her also. She revelled in his strength and his vitality and his enthusiasm; she loved to indulge in all aspects of her personality. Naked she would sit on his shoulders and make him carry her round their bedroom, her strong slender legs clinging to his neck. Daintily she would lie on his chest, her own body but a whisper against his own muscular frame, and squirm him into endless sexual endeavour. Arrogantly would she hold his arm as they descended the great staircase to greet their guests, or as they rode through St John's to a levee at the Ice House, or an auction at the slave warehouse. And primly would she sit at his side as he delivered judgement or offered an opinion. No one, least of all Kit, could doubt that she was Marguerite Hilton, the Lady of Green Grove. But beyond that, no one could doubt that she was, and content to be, Mrs Christopher Hilton.

And devotedly did she accept her pregnancies, and their results. Anthony had all but cost her life, or so it had seemed at the time, although Haines the surgeon had been content even when her cries had filled the house, and Kit, pacing the verandah, had gazed down on the anxious slaves, who without command from their master, had yet assembled at the foot of the hill.

Praying for her survival? Or praying for her death?

But Anthony was a fine, strapping boy, at eight able to fire a pistol and wield a sword to some effect.

'Is that your determination, then?' Marguerite chided. 'To make him into a soldier?' But always her criticism was softened by that unforgettable smile. 'I agree, dearest. A man should be a soldier first, and whatever else he chooses, after."

And what of a woman, he wondered. But Rebecca was only four, separated from her brother by two miscarriages, each as disturbing as a full birth, each calculated to cause ill temper and disgust, and each, happily, forgotten with the passage of time.

So then, once he had dreamed, and perhaps, without intending or understanding, had even prayed. Once he had thought himself the most miserable and corrupt of men, the most bestial. No doubt, he was still, but if that was the case, and he had sold his soul to the devil, then hell was a long time in coming to claim him, and the interval was sweeter than ever a man had known.

Yet retribution was there, always waiting. It had already overtaken those of Morgan's men who had sought to comb the beaches of Port Royal, much as it had overtaken Port Royal itself; he could remember the horror with which they had heard of the earthquake which had sent that city of sin to the bottom of the harbour he had known so well, and carried thousands of men and women with it. Jackman and Relain, and Morgan's corpse? Poor old Harry Morgan, who had died of cirrhosis of the liver almost as soon as he had taken up his post as Deputy Governor of Jamaica. Who could tell. It had not caught Tom Modyford, who had remained in England as a landed gentleman. And it had not yet caught Kit Hilton.

So, what do you think, Kit Hilton, he wondered, as he watched the smoke columns rise into the sky. Of the slaves, miserable fools, who would attempt to run away? Some of them. But then, he could pass on from those unhappy souls to the laughter of the couples in the mating compound, to the inexhaustible fascination of watching the sinuous black bodies coupling and sliding, one against the other. So reality returned in the walks through the sick house, in the occasional ghastly journey across the water. Never had he landed there; it was enough to back oars in the shallows and thrust the unfortunate black over the side. Always were the lepers gathered to wait for the new arrival. Strange people. He suspected that his own resort, on learning that he must literally rot before his own eyes, would be a spasm of madness followed by suicide. Yet these offered no sound, no signs of resentment and no attempts at violence. So perhaps the brain rotted first.

And always there was the escape, back up the hill, horse flogged at a furious gallop, for he rode as well as Marguerite now, to return to her arms, to the ice-cold glasses of sangaree, to the sound of her fingers running softly over the keys of her spinet, the lilt of her voice, for she sang quite beautifully, to the laughter of the children.

And where was the young man who had stormed up to Goodwood to challenge a governor, or who had boasted his ideals to Agrippa and Lilian Christianssen? Why, he had grown older, and there was all that need be said. He played cards with the Deputy Governor now, and they did no more than smile at each other's shortcomings, while again Marguerite played and Celestine Warner smiled at them all, and looked happier than for years. He rode into town with head held high, and should a face peer out at him from the warehouse, then he would raise his hat, were it a woman, and smile courteously enough should it be a man.

What would he do should the man come out of the doorway of the warehouse and greet him? Why, he would rein his horse and pass the time of day, pleasantly enough, congratulate him on his marriage—to which the Hiltons had been invited but which Marguerite had decided they should not attend—and ask after his family. A friend was a friend, no matter the colour of his skin. He had simply realized that the world went on its way, regardless of man's efforts, and that a man must do the best he can while the universe, and the affairs of the universe, went spinning around him. Slavery was a fact of life, and slavery operated on fear. All in all, as he had early discovered, there was less fear on Green Grove than on any other plantation in the island. In the Leewards. And going on Agrippa's own experience, in the entire Caribee Isles. A man who would attempt to tilt against the world, to stop it in its headlong career, or even to alter the course of that career, was a fool, or at the best an immature boy.

So then, was Agrippa a fool? And Lilian Christianssen? For there was the reason they seldom were at the windows to wave at him, and would never dream of speaking with him on the street. They counted him one of the plantocracy, and one could not be a planter and a Quaker at the same time. Not in this world.

But were they, in their goodness and the purity of their ambitions, doing any more for the slaves than he was? He could take much of the credit for Green Grove's peace on his own shoulders. His overseers feared him as much as they feared their mistress, and for that reason were they less inclined to give rein to their own desires and their own rages. And the blacks could at least expect fairness; savage fairness should they transgress the laws laid down by their mistress and supported by the right arm of her husband, but none the less, the law applied to all. The transportation of Martha Louise across the water had proved that to them.

And how long ago was that? Nine years? Surely she was dead, by now. But none knew, who lived and who died across the water. And none dare ask.

Oh, indeed, the Hiltons had much to celebrate. But the best of all celebrations were those they enjoyed by themselves, with Anthony marshalling his tin soldiers in the centre of the drawing-room floor, with Henry Morgan always to the fore, but not yet the tallest and best set up of the models; that place was reserved for Captain Hilton, marching at his commander's elbow, while the rest followed behind, eternally and interminably assaulting the hassock which was Panama City. Amongst these others was Jean DuCasse. His was not an unfamiliar name, in the Leewards, as England and France had found a more fruitful war was to be fought between themselves. Now he commanded a buccaneer fleet himself, which only last year had ravaged the north coast of Jamaica. A successful raid, carried out with a fleet of five ships. Perhaps in time he would equal the fame of Morgan himself.

Kit wondered if Jean, careering around the Caribbean at the head of his veteran freebooters, ever spared a thought for the successful Antiguan planter, Kit Hilton, the man who had been with him at Panama?

On the far side of the room Rebecca played with her dolls, a strange collection, some home-made, bits of wool on the ends of sticks which represented arms and legs and bodies, others imported from Holland via the enormous warehouses of St Eustatius. She seldom joined her brother in his games; they fought whenever they intended to do anything together. But they were both happy and healthy children.

He wanted no more. He had his son and heir, to carry on the Hilton name, to inherit this magnificent house and these magnificent fields, and he had his daughter, to take after her mother, he hoped and prayed, and to be married, well—no doubt, an occasion to look forward to in the distant future. But another child, even another pregnancy, would rob him yet again of the comfort of that superb body which had so strangely come into his possession. For on these private celebratory occasions the group was completed by Marguerite and himself. They shared the settee, and watched their children. She wore her undressing-robe and lay back in his arms, while their glasses of sangaree stood waiting at their elbows.

Her head rested on his shoulder, and every time he breathed he inhaled her perfume. She would employ no wet nurse, and had brought both her children to their first birthdays without saving herself. Yet did her breasts remain swollen to his touch, and delicious to feel. Nor was there more than the slightest stretch marks on her belly, the slightest thickening of her thighs. And she was past thirty. He had had the very best of her. But surely there was so much more to come.

He squeezed, gently, and she nuzzled him with the back of her head. 'And are you, now, content, dearest?' she asked.

'Should a man ever be content?'

'No. Except on the day of his death, and few reach that climax with contentment in their hearts. But few men have accomplished so much as you, in these short years you have lived.'

'Flatterer.'

'My business is with facts. How else do I operate my plantation without being robbed by my own book-keepers? Shall I itemize your prowess? For let us not suppose that you began your career with even the normal drawbacks to which your name and fortune might have reduced you. In addition, you were left an orphan with no more than the clothes on your back and the brains in your head and the courage in your heart. Yet did you survive and prosper, command a squad of musketeers before Panama, and when that venture turned out badly, yet did you once again pick yourself up from the floor.'

'Not so simply,' he smiled. 'I was dragged from the floor, by our friend Daniel.'

'No friend, Kit,' she said, twisting her body to slide right down the settee beside him, so that her head lay on his lap and she could face him. 'Not that demon, believe me. He may be regarded as an instrument of fate, as an evil instrument, surely, but here accomplishing only good. And so you sought me once again. When I had almost despaired of waiting. And thus you came, and saw, and conquered. But even then were you not content. Now you have raised the efficiency and the accomplishments of my plantation. Now you bestride the narrow world of planting like the colossus you are. You have no more fields to conquer, where sugar-cane is concerned. Nor have you anything left to accomplish as regards my bed. You have made me the happiest woman in the world, and the most content. You have brought from my belly two splendidly healthy children. You thrill me with desire and with love and with admiration whenever I look upon you.'

'But yet you are not satisfied,' he suggested.

She frowned at him. 'What makes you say that?'

'Your tone, sweetheart. The suggestions that you are leaving something unsaid.'

She sat up, violently, her hair flying and her undressing-robe trembling. She seized his hands. 'Yes. Yes, my darling.

Now I would have you take your talents and your courage to a wider field.' 'You are seeking another plantation?'

'Sometimes I wonder if you are deliberately dense, or if you merely seek to mock me. Listen to me, Kit. You are master of the richest plantation in this island. Nay, in the entire Leewards. Yet you have no say in the management of the island which protects you and from which you take your wealth. There is a dangerous imbalance. Listen to me,' she insisted as he would have kissed her.' 'Tis not of you I speak. 'Tis of Green Grove itself. It is twenty years since the master of Green Grove took his seat in the Assembly. Poor Harry had no interest in politics, and besides, twenty years ago things were different. Harry, and my father, and his brother, made their way here despite politics, not because of them. They used to smile, in the old days, at the King's Commissioners, and agree with what they said, and then ignore them. Then when the King's head was cut off, and Ayscue's Commonwealth fleet ranged these waters, there was no choice but to smile once again, and rely on the fact that three thousand miles is a deal of salt water. Then, with the restoration, when the new King also sought to impose his iniquitous taxes on us, to lease us yet again to his court favourites, we were accomplished in the arts of dissembling.'

'I had heard that the new lessor, Willoughby, came himself to manage his new estates.'

Marguerite smiled. 'Pie did, and found us rather more than he had bargained for. He settled in Barbados, and soon took to buccaneering, and disappeared at sea. No doubt he was drowned, although it suits certain parties to pretend that he may yet languish in a Spanish prison. Certain it is that he accomplished nothing for either good or evil in these parts. But then, then, Kit, politics began to hit home. The four and a half per cent tax, why, 'tis nothing while we prosper. Yet it is an iniquitous example of blatant despotism. The quarrel between King James and his people. That were bad enough. But now this infernal Dutchman has got us involved in a seemingly endless war with the French ...'

'When I first came here, your uncle told me that our only friends in these islands were the Dutch.'

'Oh, indeed, the Dutch of Eustatius. Believe me, Kit, they abhor our forcible involvement in European politics no less than we. Our business is to make what profit we may. God knows in accomplishing that we receive no assistance from Europe. But they are quick enough to get their fingers into our money. And if their squabbling should mean that our plantations are burned and our profit lost, be sure that they will still want their taxes.' She paused for breath, her face flushed.

Now at last he could manage his kiss. 'It seems to me that it is you they require in the House.'

'Aye,' she said. 'I'd sing them a song. But, being men, they have turned the Assembly into a men's club, to which no woman can be admitted. There you have the saga of Green Grove. Harry would take no part in politics during the last ten years of his life, and I was barred by my sex. While these last ten years you have been concentrating, rightly, my love, believe me when I say that, on the plantation and on me. I would have you neglect neither of us. But it behoves me to spread your protecting, your encouraging, your advancing wings over a larger canvas.'

'The Assembly?' he wondered.

'The scat is yours, by right, Kit. Every owner of a plantation has a seat, by right.'

'I know that, sweetheart. My imagination was but failing at the thought of Kit Hilton, buccaneer and matelot, robber and rapist, pretending to Parliament.'

'Oh, what rubbish you do talk,' she cried, and slipped a stage further, to her knees beside the couch, while Anthony and Rebecca abandoned their games to stare at their parents with wide eyes. 'Today you are only Kit Hilton, planter and gentleman. The past is the past. Only the present and the future is of importance. Say you will go, Kit. The House always sits as soon as the ships are loaded with the crop, and we all have more time to ourselves. Say you will go, my darling.'

Kit poured them each a glass of sangaree. 'Why,' he said, 'perhaps it is a secret ambition of mine, to strut a wider stage. Let us drink to the political career of Captain Christopher Hilton.'

* *

The Negro majordomo, resplendent in dark blue coat over white breeches and white stockings, banged the floor four times with his staff, and the room fell silent. 'Captain Christopher Hilton.'

Kit stepped through the doorway, and stopped, and took a long breath. It had been Marguerite's idea that he should arrive late. 'For I know you too well,' she had said. 'Left to yourself you will sneak into the Assembly like a thief in the night. You must arrive as the master of Green Grove.'

He was simply enough dressed, in a plain blue broadcloth coat over buckskin trousers, and he wore no wig. He carried his black tricorne under his left arm, and was unarmed, apparently. But the right-hand pocket of his coat sagged beneath the weight of a loaded pistol. He was well enough aware that he had enemies, merely by being what he was, and he doubted that the next time someone elected to murder him Agrippa would be standing by.

And he had accomplished her desire. The ripple of whispering ran across the benches in front of him, uncomfortable looking things, but it was no part of the Assembly's plans to have its members falling asleep on a hot afternoon. Now the heads turned and the muttering commenced, while the speaker, John Trumbull of Plantation Paradise, peered at the newcomer. Nor was the disturbance confined to the chamber; in the gallery which looked down on it, and where the ladies were seated, together with such of the town merchants who conceived themselves interested in what was likely to happen to their island, there was a ripple of comment. There Marguerite had just taken her seat, and was smiling at him.

"Welcome, Captain Hilton,' Mr Trumbull said. 'It is too long since we have had the pleasure of the company of the master of Green Grove. Pray take a seat.'

'Here. Kit, here,' Edward Chester said, and Kit sat on the bench beside him.

'You may continue, Mr Harding,' Trumbull said.

The planter who had been speaking bowed towards the chair, and turned to face his fellows, and more particularly Kit. 'May I also," he said, grasping the lapels of his coat, 'welcome the master of Green Grove to our midst. And indeed, sir, he could not have come at a more appropriate time. For be sure that Green Grove's future welfare is at much at stake as are any of ours, in this crisis. I repeat gentlemen, this war is no affair of ours. This ... this Dutchman came to the throne by virtue of his being the husband of Queen Mary, God bless her soul. Thus the sanctity of the English crown, of the succession, of die divine right that governs the succession, was preserved. No doubt we feared then, and rightly, the consequences of this over-close identification of England with Europe. Traditionally have we stood apart from the endless quarrels which have destroyed all that is of value to that tortured continent. None of the devastation of the Thirty Years' War ever afflicted England's green and pleasant land. And no doubt the accession of Dutch William was necessary, to prevent the equal horrors of a religious conflict at home, which might in course of time have spread its destruction to these beautiful islands. But the Queen has now been dead these several years. That man has no legal or historical justification for remaining on the throne, for involving us further in his schemes.'

'Was he not elected?' someone asked.

'Bah,' Harding said. 'Kings are not elected, sir. We are not members of some savage tribe of antiquity. And even they preserved a proper sequence of events. How may a man be king, if the blood of kings does not run through his veins? If he has not been bred to it?'

'Yet is William surely a ruling prince in his own right,' Kit suggested. 'And indeed, is he not a member of the English royal house in his own right?'

Harding frowned at him. 'I was not aware, sir, that a knowledge of English domestic history was included in your many and dazzling accomplishments.'

'Yet is my friend entirely correct,' Chester said. 'His Majesty's mother was the Princess Mary, daughter of King Charles the First. The Queen, God bless her memory, was his own first cousin.'

'That may be so,' Harding declared. 'But I have not heard it expressed as a principle of succession that the crown should pass to cousins. No, no. King James had proved himself an unlucky monarch, and England must have a monarch, so Dutch William was installed, as the consort of Queen Mary ...'

'Not so, sir,' interrupted another voice. 'They were jointly installed, as equal authority on the throne.'

'Expedience, sir,' Harding shouted. 'Expedience. Then it was necessary, for the good of the realm. Now it is no longer necessary. But now we are fatally embroiled in a war with France.'

'Fatally, sir?' Chester inquired.

'Name me a Dutch victory, sir, in the last five years,' Harding demanded. 'This William prides himself upon extricating his armies, summer after summer, from the worst consequences of defeat. Yet are the defeats continual. But that, sir, is not the question we debate here today. England, Europe, are three thousand miles away. We are here, surrounded by perils enough, God knows. There is at this moment a French fleet rampaging through the Caribbean Sea. And it is not even a fleet of war. It is a fleet of buccaneers, commanded by the dreadful DuCasse. It will visit upon us the frightful calamities which Morgan was wont to inflict upon the Spaniards. We have all heard what happened in Jamaica. The graves were torn open and the very bodies of the dead violated. Common decency forbids me relating what happened to the living. Jamaica is not so very far from us here, and be sure, that when a French fleet appears off our shores, there will be no succour to be expected from St Kitts, divided as it is between the two nations. Why, I have heard that they already face each other along a line of entrenchments, but awaiting the first shot.'

'They have done that often enough,' a voice said.

'Aye, to their ruination,' Harding declared. 'But, sirs, the point I put to you now is this. We are, so we are told, part of England. We must pay taxes for the support of this abominable war, this abominable foreign government. We must transport our goods in English bottoms and none other. But, gentlemen, what do we receive in return?'

'Admiral Benbow,' said a voice.

'Benbow?' Harding demanded contemptuously. 'There is indeed the measure of King William's regard for us. We appeal for a fleet and an admiral, and he sends us a few worm-eaten second-raters commanded by a man who has risen from the lower deck. A common seaman, by God, intended to protect cane-planters. Why, tell me this? Where was Benbow when DuCasse landed in Jamaica?'

'Out looking for the French,' someone said.

'Aye,' Harding said. 'Port Royal is the home of the English fleet, yet when the French land, they are away, looking for the French. There is an example of Benbow's genius. Think not of him as your protection, gentlemen.'

'There is the revenue frigate in St Kitts,' a voice said, and brought general laughter.

'Aye, the revenue frigate,' Harding said. 'Did not a respected member of our own assembly show that tub the strength in his teeth, the speed of his heels, when occasion demanded?'

There was a storm of applause, and Chester slapped Kit on the back. He frowned, and stared at the Speaker in confusion. He had not expected to be congratulated on his illegal activities in this body.

'Indeed that is so,' Mr Trumbull said. 'And it occurs to me, gentlemen, that this would be a good opportunity for Captain Hilton to give us the benefit of his experience. I have heard it said that you know DuCasse, Captain. There you are a measure more knowledgeable than us all.'

Kit stood up. 'Indeed, gentlemen,' he said. 'I have known Jean DuCasse since boyhood. We were matelots, in Hispaniola. We sailed with Morgan. Our paths only separated after the disbandment of that fleet. Jean elected to stay with the sea, I elected to take the path of planting and peace.'

'Well said, indeed. Captain,' Chester said. 'But what of this man you know so well? Is he the brilliant admiral, the devil incarnate, we are led to believe?'

'We were matelots,' Kit repeated. 'Without Jean DuCasse at my side, gentlemen, I would not have survived to be here today. He is a man of many parts, sirs. Give him a pistol and he will have your eye at twenty paces. Give him a cutlass and he will fight until you drop from weariness. Give him a ship, and yes, sirs, he will navigate her to safety. And give him a task, as he has now been given by his country, and gentlemen, he will carry it to a successful conclusion or die in the attempt. He is a born leader of men. That I can assure you without hesitation. But a devil incarnate? By no means. He is more of a gentleman than I would claim to be.'

'Yet are the atrocities in Jamaica attested by eye witnesses,' Harding insisted.

'No doubt the French were there assisted by their allies, the Caribs,' someone said.

'Perhaps Captain Hilton can tell us of these also,' Mr Trumbull remarked.

'To my knowledge, sir,' Kit said. 'I have never yet set eyes on a Carib.'

'Yet you have a Carib relative, at least by marriage,' a voice muttered.

Instantly there was uproar, with Trumbull banging on the desk with his gavel, and gentlemen shouting at each other from opposite sides of the room, and being assisted in their cacophony by their wives from the gallery.

'Order,' bellowed Mr Trumbull. 'Order. And gentlemen, I must ask you to be so good as to leave our Deputy Governor and his family from these debates. A man is not responsible for the excesses of his parents, unless he chooses to continue such excesses. Colonel Warner has shown us where his heart and his strength lies, time and again. It is here, in Antigua. He loathes and abhors the name of Indian Warner as much as any man present. I'd lay my life on that. Now I thank Captain Hilton for his exposition upon the talents and restraints of Monsieur DuCasse. I would but remind the gallant captain that a man can be considered only as good as the company he keeps, and in that regard we must anticipate in Monsieur DuCasse not only an enemy, but an enemy of a peculiarly vicious and bloodthirsty stamp. It behoves us, as responsible for the well-being and prosperity of our colony, to keep that thought ever-present in our minds, and to seek our best solution to the problem it presents. But emotions are running too high today for a continuance of this debate. The House is adjourned until tomorrow week.'

The planters rose as he left the chair and joined them on the floor, and now the doors were thrown open, and the ladies were permitted to descend.

'That was a splendid opening to your career in the Assembly, Kit,' Chester declared. 'Was he not splendid, Mary?'

Mary Chester put up her cheek for Kit to kiss. 'Indeed you were, Kit. You looked so handsome, standing there. Why, I was more than ever jealous of Marguerite.'

Marguerite smiled at her, benevolently. 'Sometimes I am even jealous of myself, my sweet child.' She held Kit's arm. 'But you were the most handsome and the most authoritative man there, Kit. While they have spent their lives in talk, you have spent your life in action. You are a natural leader, just as you claimed that French boy to be. And I take odds with you on that point. I met them both together, you know, Edward. And even then Kit was the leader. Monsieur DuCasse but trailed behind to pick up the pieces. I will not pretend that at the time I appreciated my husband at his true worth, but I was only a girl.' She laughed, and squeezed his arm. Yet her eyes were uncommonly serious. 'Would you not say that he is a natural leader, Edward?'

Chester frowned at her, and then glanced at Kit, and smiled. 'Why, you may well be right, my sweet. For depend upon it, when we need a leader, we shall truly need a leader.'

'My own thoughts entirely,' Marguerite agreed. 'Now we must hurry off to Goodwood for lunch. Papa will be anxious to hear how Kit got on.' She led him from the chamber and down the steps, to where George Frederick waited with the carriage, on the edge of a crowd of onlookers. 'Why so serious, after such a triumph, my darling?'

Kit sat beside her. 'I had forgot the history which surrounds your family.'

'And does the presence of a skeleton in my closet now disturb you?'

'Not in the least. I but wish to know where I must stand, if I am to be at your shoulder.'

Marguerite's eyes glinted. 'Just hate the very name of Indian Warner, Kit.'

'Have you ever met him?'

'I saw him once, as a child. And I knew him then for an evil thing. He was my grandfather's bastard, Kit. There is an apt description. And after old Sir Thomas died, Papa tried to make the boy into a human being, and failed. With his Indian mother he fled back to the forest of Dominica, where they belonged. Yet were they not allowed to disappear into eternity. The French sought them out, and ever anxious to make capital of dissensions amongst the English, appointed him Governor of Dominica, as if Dominica was theirs to govern. There you have the sorry tale. Be sure that should he ever re-enter our lives Papa will hang him higher than Haman, and with much less ado.'

'Who knows,' Kit mused. 'Perhaps he is already dead, and your fears are groundless.'

'He is not dead,' she said. 'We would have heard of that good fortune. Nor do I have fears. Have I not you at my side?' She seized his hand. 'I am so proud of you, my darling. Your first day in the House, and you left them in no doubts as to the part you would play.'

'I fail to understand your enthusiasm. I did no more than make a point of accuracy, during Harding's diatribe. And then I answered a question put to me by the Speaker.'

'Ah, but it is the way you did both those things, your confidence and assurance, your very appearance, both as you entered the room and as you stood there, that impressed us all, my darling. They knew a man had come amongst them. They will not forget that. And yet, I think you were a trifle inhibited, by my presence, no doubt. I shall not attend the House again. I shall leave it to others to bring me news of your prowess. I will say only this to you, Kit; there are great things afoot, and men, once embarked upon large and perilous ventures, need talented and courageous captains. You are such a man, and today they recognized that. I would but ask you to keep that fact in mind.'

George Frederick had cracked his whip, and the carriage was moving forward. Kit looked through the window, beyond the crowd, at the warehouse. At the top of the steps Lilian Christianssen stood beside Agrippa and his wife. Many in the crowd waved and cheered at the master and mistress of Green Grove. But not that trio.

'A victory.' Harding waved the piece of paper. 'So it is described. Dutch William has recaptured the fortress of Namur. This is his crowning achievement, gentlemen, after near ten years of war.'

The house broke into a storm of cheering and shouting, stamping on the floor.

'Aye,' Harding said, striding up and down. 'You may well celebrate, this night. But I would ask you this, my friends. What are we celebrating? Had not the war all but ground to a halt? Was there not talk of peace between England and France? Are not negotiations always liable to be lengthy, where such a conflict must be ended? Not so, says Dutch William. The French are tardy, so I will once again take the field. And by God, I will win a victory. Because they are not looking. They are thinking only of peace. So think well, as you raise your glasses. This is the victor of Glencoe you are toasting. This is the man who would bring ruin upon all our heads. For mark my words, gentlemen, Louis will now be tearing up his projected offers and proffers. He will not suffer Namur to be wrenched from his hands, treacherously. I see no end to this war. I see only disaster staring us in the face.'

'Surely you are speaking treason,' Chester said quietly.

Harding rounded on him. 'Do you accuse me of that, sir?'

'By no means,' Chester said. 'I merely point out how your words might be construed, should they reach English ears.'

'Aye,' Harding said. And so they would. But I speak for Antiguan ears. You have all been so dumbfounded by this remarkable news, this unexpected blessing, this resounding victory so splendidly gained by our noble monarch, that you have omitted to look further. I did, gentlemen. I spoke with the captain of the Southern Queen. Because he had a tale to tell. Of five ships he sighted but three days ago when becalmed off Barbuda. Ships steering south of St Kitts, reconnoitring these waters, he estimated. Five ships, gentlemen. There is a number to conjure with. Do we possess five ships? Perhaps there are five, recently loaded with sugar, but leaving St John's on the day they were laden. Does Sir William Staple-ton command five ships? We all know of his moth-eaten frigate. Could it be Benbow? Oh, happy day. But would Benbow sail the Leewards without visiting St John's, without making his presence known? But yet the number is familiar. I seem to remember that when Monsieur DuCasse made his raid on Jamaica, it was with five ships.'

He paused, gazed at the consternation in their faces.

'Five ships,' he said again, after a moment. 'In the Leewards, and at this time. Because, as Captain Hilton has told us, this is no ignorant seaman we deal with. This is a man of intelligence, an intelligence, I would swear, far surpassing that of Morgan. Morgan sought only gold, gentlemen, and counted himself a patriot because he took it from the Dons. DuCasse is also a patriot, and seeks to harm England, not enrich himself. Suppose he had landed here two months ago, gentlemen, and burned our canefields? Would we have wept? Or would we have laughed at his ignorance, at his kindness, in saving us the labour of doing it ourselves? For then the cane was ripe. But now, gentlemen, now. Supposing Monsieur DuCasse lands here next week, or even next month, and supposing we defeat him, so that he is enabled only to set fire to our cane? Our young shoots, gentlemen, from around which our slaves gather the weeds every day of the week, just to preserve those infinitely valuable lives. Where is our prosperity then? Where is the future of this island, then? Where is the inheritance we choose to leave our sons and daughters, then? And this is supposing that we defeat the French. But now, let us consider with what shall we defeat them? With the garrison in St John's? A hundred men on the muster roll, of whom at least thirty are ever sick? Our overseers? A pack of mutinous dogs. Our slaves? Who wait only to get their black fingers at our own throats? Think on that, gentlemen.'

Once again he paused, to enjoy their expressions.

'But what remedy have we?' asked a voice. 'If the captain of the Southern Queen saw DuCasse's fleet already in these waters, may we not expect an assault any day?'

'Aye,' said another. 'We must place ourselves in the best condition of defence we may. Perhaps Captain Hilton would advise us on this matter also.'

'Willingly,' Kit said. 'It would seem to me that the obvious way to discourage these pirates, because however patriotic, they are no more than pirates, would be to prevent their landing at all.'

'And how do you do that, pray?' demanded Harding. 'There are fifty odd miles of coastline to be defended. Would you create earthworks along the entire beach? It would take you years, and the threat is present now.'

'I agree with you entirely, sir,' Kit said. 'So let us take a lesson from history. Was not King Alfred confronted with the same problem, seven hundred years ago? He had no fleet, but was assailed by one. His solution was a band of mounted warriors, always at the ready, able to gather in haste wherever the Vikings were seen making for the shore.

Now, gentlemen, he had all southern England to defend. We have but Antigua. And we certainly have the horses, and the men.'

'By God, sir,' said Mr Trumbull. 'That is a brilliant suggestion.'

'Brilliant?' Harding shouted. 'It is the suggestion, indeed, of a man who knows nothing but warfare and fighting. And believe me, gentlemen, I am grateful to have so distinguished a warrior in our midst, should we ever need him. But my contention is that we do not need him in this present crisis. Because it is not our crisis. It is none of our making, and indeed, we hate the thought of it. It can reflect no profit on us, either in money or in fame. On the contrary, it can bring only disaster. We are being dragooned, gentlemen, into a quarrel in which we can only lose, as we have been so often dragooned in the past. I say that we should have none of it.'

'And like an ostrich, bury our heads in the sand while DuCasse does his worst to our backsides?' Chester inquired.

'I'll take no offence today, Edward,' Harding said. 'The matter is too grave for levity. It is to preserve your miserable backside, aye, and that of your pretty little wife, that I am speaking. Gentlemen, listen to me, I beg of you. We receive no good of England, neither succour, nor credit, nor compliments. The sole result of our being English is to suffer for it. But are we, then, English? Are we not prouder to describe ourselves as Antiguans? Hear me out," he bellowed, as the hubbub rose. 'What are you afraid of? The truth? Our future lies in this island and this island alone. Be sure the Dutch in St Eustatius will never let us down. They need us, and they hate their own government in Amsterdam, as much as we need them and hate those stuffed-up prigs in Whitehall. The future can bring us only disaster if we remain tied to Dutch William's apron-strings, and even if he is succeeded by the Princess Anne, as is the present intention, then think back on this, gentlemen, did the rule of the Stuarts bring us any prosperity? Or is it not a fact that most of our fathers and grandfathers came to these islands to escape those very fickle Scots?'

'By God, but you are changeable,' Kit said. 'A week ago you were defending their divine right.'

'No inconsistency in that, sir,' Harding insisted. 'I believe they do have a divine right, to the throne of England. We are under no divine command to remain in England to be ruled by them. That is why we arc here, sir. I say have done with it. Now, while we may.'

The planters stared at him, and at each other, and at the Speaker. But already there was a hum of whispering, and it had spread to the gallery. By this evening, Kit realized, it would be all over the island.

'And pray, sir,' Chester said, 'supposing we all followed your suggestion, which I assume is to declare ourselves the free and sovereign state of Antigua, how then would we save ourselves from the French? Would we not be even more vulnerable? Would they even know of our decision?'

'They'd do that quick enough,' Harding said. 'We would immediately inform Sir William Stapleton that we no longer recognized him as our governor, and be sure the news would spread to French ground soon enough.'

'And then, by God, we could raise that mounted force of which Captain Hilton spoke,' someone said. ' 'Tis a fact that the buccaneers, if actuated by a desire for profit, will bite on no hard nut, and if forced on by patriotism, would far rather pass us by should we declare ourselves free of England.'

'By God,' Kit said. 'By God.' He got to his feet. 'That I should sit here in an English Assembly, in a gathering of men of repute, and hear such unmitigated treason. By God, sir, had I that troop of horse of which we spoke earlier at my back, my very first act would be to place you under arrest.'

'Treason?' Harding shouted. 'Why, sir, you seek a quarrel.'

'Oh, aye,' Kit said. 'I seek a quarrel, John Harding. You may be sure of that. I’ll quarrel with any man who preaches treason.'

'Yet are we not all already guilty of treason, Kit,' Chester murmured, 'in acknowledging Dutch William at all? 'Tis a specious point to be sure. Is a man required to give his unflinching loyalty to his country, or to the man who happens to sit on the throne at the moment? The latter were an easy sop to the conscience.'

'You, Edward?' Kit demanded. 'Of all people, you? We accepted William and Mary, when they came to the throne ...'

'Were we asked to accept them, sir?' Harding demanded.

'No, no, we were informed of the event, in the course of time.'

'Yet has it been sanctified by time,' Kit insisted. 'You'll withdraw your suggestion, sir, or be sure I'll call you to account.'

A hush fell on the chamber. Harding stared at Kit, his gaze flickering down to the right arm which hovered by the weighted pocket.

'By God, sir,' he said at last. 'Fight you? A professional murderer? When I duel, sir, it is with a gentleman.'

'By God,' Kit shouted. 'You'll ...'

The sound of the gavel battered on his words. 'Gentlemen, gentlemen,' called Mr Trumbull. 'This business has gone far enough. The house is adjourned. We'll let these tempers cool a while, and resume the debate in a more rational atmosphere.'

Kit turned his stare from Harding to the Speaker, then crammed his hat on his head and marched from the chamber.

To encounter Marguerite on the stairs. 'Why, sweetheart,' he said. 'I had no idea that you would be here today. You said ...'

'That I would no longer attend,' she said, speaking quietly, but he frowned as he saw the anger in her eyes. It was an expression he had not witnessed in a very long time. 'I did not wish to inhibit you, Kit. But it seems I made a mistake.'

'You ... did you not hear what that man was proposing? What do you think your father, as Deputy Governor, would have said?'

'Oh, you fool, Kit. You fool. You see life going on its way all around you, and you have not the wit to understand it. Papa hates England more than John Harding. But he is not important this day. It is you. You had them at your feet, but a week ago. They would have followed your lead, willingly, given a few more hours of such straight talking, such authority. Did you know that Trumbull retires from his post within the year? Did you not realize that this was the reason I was so anxious for you to take your scat? Speaker of the Antigua House of Assembly. There is no more important post in the entire Caribee Isles. Perhaps in the world.'

He frowned at her. 'You planned that, for me?'

'Of course I did. Does not every wife wish for her husband to aspire to the very summit? But now ... yet it can be done, still. A reappraisal of the situation ...'

'Madam, you disgust me.' Kit said. 'Reappraisal? You have scant knowledge of your husband if you suppose I would change my tune for a position. You have scant knowledge of my ambitions if you think I would seek to lead a pack of traitors. And you have scant knowledge of the world if you think this little rock is of the slightest importance to anyone who does not live on it.'

Her turn to stare. No doubt it was the first time in her life she had been so addressed, at least since that fateful day on the hill-top in Tortuga. Pin-points of rage gathered in the centres of the green eyes. Yet was she still perfectly controlled, aware that the usual crowd had gathered in, the planters at the top of the steps, the hangers-on at the foot. Here was a ripe source of scandal, for many a long day.

Marguerite smiled. 'You are angry, my darling," she said softly, 'and upset. Come on back to Green Grove, and we shall discuss the matter further over a jug of sangaree. I had forgot the speed and vehemence of your temper, darling Kit.' She had raised her arm while she spoke, and already the crowd was parting to allow George Frederick to bring the carriage to the foot of the steps.

'I'll come to Green Grove,' Kit said, 'when my belly feels the urge.'

He turned away and went down the steps. People stepped aside, and he walked down the street. Where? He neither knew nor cared. He felt the whole world was swirling about his head. On what a senseless, silly issue. Did he care whether Antigua was independent or a part of England? What hold had England on him? Was not every word that John Harding had spoken absolutely true?

And did he not, through Marguerite, have a greater stake in this island than any other man there today?

Through Marguerite.

And what a stake. He found himself standing on the dock, gazing at the almost empty harbour. Two weeks ago all had been hustle and bustle here, as the last of the sugar ships had been loaded. Now the port was again sleepy. God, to be at sea. What had Marguerite promised him, once? The biggest, the finest ship that could be built. He should have taken that.

But would she have come with him? Perhaps not. Perhaps it would have been better had she not. At sea men were free. All men, regardless of the colour of their skins.

So then, he was a good deal of a hypocrite. But he had known this for a very long time. He hated slaver)'. He hated it from the first and he hated it still. He pretended that he led his blacks as a general might command his army, but yet was the lash in constant use, and worse. He would take part in this life, because of the wealth and the power and the admiration and the love it brought him, but he would not put his seal on the decision that it was better than any other life, better than the freedom so hardly gained in England, better than the world, that Antigua was the world. To do that would be to condemn himself to being one of them.

And was he not already, one of them?

'They say,' Agrippa remarked, 'that no man can ever fight his true nature for all of his life. But that hot tongue of yours will get you into trouble, one day, Kit. Unless it has already done so.'

Kit half turned his head. 'Were you there?'

'I am a typical St John's layabout,' Agrippa pointed out. 'I always attend the Assembly. It is like being present on Olympus at a gathering of the gods.'

'It is a relief to discover that at least one person on this island can regard our proceedings as a joke.'

'I hope to be laughing the day I die, too. You are invited to dinner.'

Now Kit did turn. 'By you?'

'By Dag Christianssen. If you are not above accepting the hospitality of a Quaker.'

Kit frowned at him. 'And he is not below inviting a planter to his table?'

Agrippa grinned. 'We both figure you put on a suit of clothes, Kit. Clothes are easy. You can always take them off.'

'For which, Lord, we humbly thank thee.' Dag raised his head, smiled at his guest. 'You'll finish the bottle, Kit.'

'Why, I ...' Kit looked the length of the table, to where Astrid Christianssen also smiled at him. 'It is strange, to be drinking alone.'

'Why so?' Astrid asked. 'If you like the taste, and the quality.'

'The taste and the quality are delicious. The meal was delicious.' His gaze drifted across to Lilian, sitting opposite; her hair was loose and she wore a simple grey gown, as shapeless as ever. He had not spoken to her in nine years. Then she had been seventeen. Now she would be twenty-six, a tall, handsome, grave young woman. 'I really do not know how to thank you all.'

You all. Agrippa sat next to Lilian, and Abigail sat next to himself. She was a plump, pretty girl, very dark-skinned, and looking more so in her white dress. She was a true Negress, as opposed to the many northern tribes included in the generic term by the planters. There was memory from the past. Sitting down to dinner with a Negro and his wife. Sitting down to dinner with a friend.

'You may pay for your dinner, Kit,' Dag said. 'By telling us whether you feel we are really in imminent danger of a French invasion.'

'I'm afraid I believe we are,' Kit said.

'Oh, no,' Astrid cried. 'But what must we do?'

'I'm afraid we will have to fight them,' Kit said. 'They are, as we are constantly reminded, no more than buccaneers, not soldiers. Any Great House, properly defended, will be discouraging to them. If you will remember their raid on Jamaica, the only plantations which fell were those which were surrendered or abandoned. As for St John's, I do not think they would even consider an assault.'

'Right,' Dag said, half to himself. And sighed. 'No doubt you are right.'

'But you would not contradict your beliefs, old friend. Nor should you. On the unlikely mischance that a Frenchman should break in here, you may safely leave your life in the care of Agrippa, surely.'

'I pray it will not come to that,' the Negro said.

Dag smiled at Kit's astonishment. 'Agrippa thinks as we do, now. And Abigail.'

'By God.' Kit scratched his head. 'You'll forgive me. I had not supposed Christianity was of interest to you.'

'Nor was it,' Agrippa acknowledged. 'Until Dag got to talking.'

Kit picked up Abigail's left hand; she wore a thin gold band. 'And you also?'

She smiled at him. 'You got for ... I'm sorry, Agrippa spends so much time making me speak good English. You have to thank Dag for that too.'

'I wish you would tell me how it came about.'

'He purchased my freedom, Captin. You could say he bought me. I belong to him, double.'

'And you've children?'

'No, Kit,' Agrippa said. 'I'd not wish a child on this world unless his skin could be as white as snow.'

Astrid gave a nervous smile. 'Or perhaps until the world changes for the better, he means, Kit. It must.'

'Aye,' Kit said. 'But I'd have thought yours was not a Christian concept, Agrippa.'

'I am new to the religion, Kit. Would you describe planting in Antigua as a Christian profession?'

'You'll not quarrel at my table,' Dag said.

'I'll not quarrel with Agrippa under any circumstances, Dag. But our conversation leads me to wonder why you have not tried your persuasive tongue on more of the Negroes.'

'Would that I could, Kit. But I have been expelled from too many plantations in my efforts to do so.'

'I fail to see why. You can hardly be accused of preaching sedition.'

'Oh, but I am. You cannot enslave the body of a man, efficiently, unless you also enslave his soul. It is impossible to be a Christian, and not believe in the eternal freedom of your soul. Therefore it is impossible to be a slave and Christian at the same time. Logic'

'Yes,' Kit said. 'You are all too deep for me. I can only say that you have not attempted to preach on Green Grove.'

Dag smiled, sadly. 'And what do you suppose would be the reaction of your wife to that, Kit?'

Kit gazed at him for several seconds.

'I must sec if I can find you a horse,' Agrippa said.

'At this late hour?' Dag demanded. 'You'll spend the night here, Kit.'

'Of course you will, Kit,' Astrid insisted. 'We shall be pleased. Unless you feel your wife will be worried.'

'To say truth,' Kit admitted, 'Marguerite is not at the moment very pleased with me. She sympathizes more with the point of view of Mr Harding than I supposed.'

Dag smiled at him. 'Then perhaps it would be as well not to return until tomorrow. Time is the great healer in family differences. They are infinitely preferable to quarrels and harsh words, or harsher deeds, which may be regretted."

'Yet must we not interfere between husband and wife,' Astrid said. 'Believe me, Kit, we should be more than happy to offer you a bed. But only if you feel it would be best.'

Kit scratched his head again, and found himself staring at Lilian. He had drunk the entire bottle of wine himself, and he had drunk it while still in a state of some agitation. The room was swaying unevenly, and he had an erection. He was angry with Marguerite and with himself. He had wanted to fight Harding. Instead he had all but quarrelled with his oldest friends. His only friends. Now he wanted ... what?

And Lilian had taken no part in the discussion, either for her religion or against the planters. And now, having met his eyes for only an instant, she lowered her head to stare at the plate.

'No doubt Dag is right,' he heard himself saying. 'Marguerite's rages seldom last very long.'

'Then it is settled,' Dag said. 'And the hour is late. I am sure we shall all be better for a good night's sleep. Lilian, you'll make up a bed on the floor of the office, and sleep there. Kit, you can have Lilian's bed.'

'I could not possibly evict Lilian,' Kit protested.

'You may have our bed. Kit,' Agrippa said. 'If it does not concern you.'

'Now, why should it do that?' Kit demanded.

'Gentlemen,' Dag said. 'This happens to be my house, and you will surely allow me to make the arrangements within it. I am sure Lilian has no objection to sleeping in the office, Kit.'

'I should be delighted to offer Kit the use of my bed,' Lilian said.

'Then you will show him up,' Astrid said. 'Dag, you and Kit are much of a size. No doubt you can discover a nightshirt to fit him.'

'That I shall.' Dag left the table, bustled towards the back of the house. Kit stood up, found Agrippa looking at him. 'Sleep well, Kit,' the Negro said. 'And sound.' 'I usually do.'

Lilian had already gone up the steps, and waited for him there.

'I'll say good night, Astrid.'

'It is our great pleasure to have you under our roof once again, Kit,' Astrid said. 'I hope, in the future, that you will not only seek to visit us in times of crisis.'

'Be sure that I shall not.' He climbed the stairs, watching the gown moving in front of him, obscured in the gloom, for she carried the candle. 'Your parents are uncommonly kind."

'I think they look on you as the son they never had.' She opened the door on the landing. ' 'Tis a small room, and uncommonly untidy.'

He stood in the doorway beside her, and his arm brushed hers. Here was no magnificently scented rush of air, as with Marguerite, but a subtle quality of freshness, such as he had not known in a very long time. But he had known it once. In Panama City.

'I wish you would allow me to sleep downstairs,' he said. 'It is not right.'

'You are our guest.' She moved forward, lifted the pillow on the pallet bed, and took out a wisp of white. Then she placed the candle in the holder. 'It is also a somewhat hard bed.'

'I am tired enough to sleep on anything.' He stood beside her again. I want you, his mind said. I wanted you years ago, and then my wanting was overwhelmed by my desire for Marguerite. Now ... was it just the anger talking? The anger and the wine? The desire to spite Marguerite? But was that not the reason he was here at all? Come down to it, was that not the reason he had been invited? Antigua was cleaving down the centre, and Kit Hilton was a catch, for the common party. Could they but hold him. If that were so, then why should he spare them a thought of gratitude, of concern? This night he wanted a soft, fresh, unexpected home for his weapon. His body demanded it. And here it was, in front of him.

God curse the invention of wine.

'I will wish you good night,' she said, and made to step round him. His left arm moved, and she stopped, his hand just brushing her thigh. 'Why, Papa,' she said, 'you have found a clean nightshirt after all.'

'It is old, and mere linen,' Dag confessed. 'Yet will it cover your nakedness, Kit.'

He took the garment. 'And I am again grateful. If I can ever repay this kindness, you have but to ask.'

'Debts, repayments, are for enemies, Kit,' Dag said. 'A friend is just happy to help a friend. Now we shall bid you good night.'

He changed his clothes, put on the borrowed nightshirt, blew out the candle, and lay on the bed. What torture. It also smelt of her, and wherever he moved, whenever he turned from side to side, his body touched sheets which only twelve hours before had brushed against her. Yet surely would he soon be asleep, and awake, sober and controlled, once again.

He settled on his back, staring at the darkened ceiling, listening to the creaking of the stairs outside as the Christianssens mounted to their bedroom. What did Quakers do, in bed, together? Was there an abandonment of humanity, a realization of the joys of being animals, such as existed between Marguerite and himself? Such as had existed. And would again. Today she was angry. She was ambitious. And because she was a woman, she could never realize her ambitions in herself, and so desired them for her husband. What cruelty, what a waste of talent, was caused by the historical conception that women were inferior. What a magnificent Speaker of the House would Marguerite make. And had she not already proved herself without an equal at that most masculine of tasks, plantation management?

But was she not also the possessor of that most feminine of attributes, an imperious, unforgiving rage? Which was now no doubt in full flow.

So then, was he afraid of her? He sat up. By God, why should he be? He was her husband. She belonged to him. To his bed, whenever he chose to summon her. To his will, whenever he chose to make it known. To his hand, if he chose to inflict it upon her. By God, and he had run away from her this morning. As she had herself pointed out, time and again, he was unable to recognize his true stature, his true place in the world. But she knew it. Then she could expect nothing less than to feel the weight of his anger. And soon.

He stood up, found himself swaying, and steadied himself against the wall. He had no tinder, and could not relight the candle; he found his clothes by feeling towards the chair where he had left them. Yet was he making too much noise. He scooped them under his arm, opened the door, and blinked. Out here was much lighter; there was a full moon, shining through the skylight at the top of the stairs. And reaching all the way down to the foot. This was safer. His last sway had all but set him tumbling downwards.

He descended the stairs, cautiously, hugging his clothes to his chest, grasping the rail with his left hand, and saw Lilian, standing below him.

'Kit?' she whispered.

'Oh, Christ,' he muttered. 'Oh, Christ.'

'I heard you move,' she said. 'The office is beneath my room. Is something the matter?'

He reached the floor, and could pause for breath. But surely this was a mistake. A sway of less than a foot to his left would carry him against her. 'I want to go home,' he said.

'Now?'

'I must ...'

'You did not feel that way earlier, Kit.' 'Then the wine spoke for me.'

'As it is doing now,' she said severely. 'But in a different voice. I doubt you could sit a horse the distance.' And then her face broke into a smile, so relieving when set against her normal solemnity. 'And you have none, unless you will take Papa's mule. Then will you ride until this hour tomorrow.'

He leaned against the wall, gazing at her. The moon shone full on her nightdress. Not through it, certainly. Her body was a dark shadow. Yet it was there.

'I must go,' he said. 'And so must you. Back to bed. You do not know me, Lilian. You do not know of my crimes.'

'I know you well enough,' she said. 'I know the goodness in you, Kit, which you are constantly trying to bury beneath some assumed characteristic of villainy. I think I know the true Kit Hilton. Now come, I will assist you back to your bed.'

Her hands closed on his arms, and he sat down on the steps. Perhaps his weight was too much for her. But not enough. His clothes slipped to the floor, and he found his fingers on her thighs.

'Kit,' she whispered. 'Let me help you, Kit.'

He pulled her down, on to his knee, and his right hand searched the front of her nightdress.

'Kit,' she whispered, suddenly alarmed. 'No, Kit, you cannot.'

Here was softness. Softness he must know better. There were ties at the neck of her nightdress, neatly bowed. He wrapped his fingers in them and pulled them apart, carrying the material with it, laying her bare to the waist. She gasped, and pushed against him, found she could not get free herself, and swung at his face instead with her closed fist. He ducked beneath it, and found his face against her breasts. He nuzzled them and kissed them, sucked the nipples into his mouth. The arm swung round his head and came to rest on it, for a moment hugging him yet closer.

'Kit,' she whispered. 'Kit, in the name of God ...' she bit the words back. Because God was not present here. Kit was already slipping from the step, turning as he did so, completing the ruin of her nightdress as his mouth moved from her breasts to sink lower. Her legs closed, but too late; they only enveloped his neck, and now her body sank forward, over his head, and he felt her fingers on his back.

Nothing had changed. Green Grove was basked as ever in the warm morning sun, flooding out of the eastern coast of the island to bathe the western, brilliantly illuminating the bright green of the young cane shoots.

He rode into the compound, slowly, because the mule would go no faster, and the dogs raced forward, growling and barking, to greet him. The mule stopped, and scraped at the dust with its hooves. But George Frederick was also running forward, to take the bridle, and Kit was dropping from the saddle, to stroke and slap the eager mastiffs.

'The mistress does be aback, Captin,’ George Frederick said. 'But she going come home soon.'

Kit nodded, walked up the steps, stopped to look along the verandah to where Miss Johnson was leading Anthony in his Latin grammar while Rebecca played by herself at their feet. But Anthony had also seen his father come in, and now jumped up and down in his seat. 'Papa, Papa, you're home.'

'Hush, child,' Miss Johnson insisted. No doubt she was not as old as she looked and pretended, but she was older than either Kit or Marguerite, and was severely conscientious in her duties as governess; her father was the manager of the Ice House, and so she occupied a privileged position, by no means a planter's daughter, but by no means a poor white either; she approximated Lilian on the social scale, he supposed, although she would never have admitted to equality with a Quaker.

'Aye,' he said. 'You'd best obey Miss Johnson, or she'll have her stick to you, I've no doubt. I'm back, Tony. I'm back.'

He took off his hat, and went inside. Lilian, Lilian, Lilian. Then what was he doing here? There was an unanswerable question. Save that here was the fount of his strength, and if he was to put this behind him, then must he be sure what he was doing.

If he must put this behind him. There was the opportunist speaking.

Ellen Jane waited at the foot of the stairs. 'Is good to see you home, Captin,' she said. 'You going aback?'

'No. I'll have a bath, I think. And a jug of sangaree.' He went upstairs, into the great bedroom. The bed was made, and the room might never have been touched by human hand. But Marguerite's perfume filled the air. Was he afraid of her? Of her reactions? Of her denunciations? Or was he more afraid of what he had done to Lilian? Of what he had caused Lilian to do to herself.

He took off his coat, threw it across the bed, and sat beside it, staring through the window at the canefields. Now he was sober, and sufficiently tired to be dispirited. Thus true evaluation of the situation should wait until he had had a rest, and a chance to think. And before these, a hot bath. There was the solution.

He stripped off his shirt, turned to face the still open door, and gazed at Marguerite, hatless, her coat open. 'Welcome home,' she said.

He licked his lips. Christ, how nervous he was, on a second. 'Am I then, welcome.'

'Silly darling,' she said, coming into the room and closing the door behind her. 'I apologize for yesterday, without reservation. It was the one thing I was determined we should never do, air our differences in public. Be sure that on our next appearance in St John's I shall be the most contrite of wives.'

'I disappointed you,' he said. 'You were entitled to anger.'

'No wife is entitled to do anything but support her husband,' she insisted. 'I had forgot that.' She picked up his shirt, held it close for a moment, and then put it down again. 'Was your dinner satisfactory?' Her head half turned. 'I had George Frederick return to oversee the situation. I should also ask, was her bed soft?'

Kit inhaled. There was never any possibility of subterfuge or dissembling, with Marguerite. In that she was superior to any of her sex.

'I returned to speak with you of that.'

'Indeed?' She sat on the bed, her hands on her lap. 'Your bath is ready. I will assist you, and you can say what you want, then.'

'Will you want to listen? It must be mainly goodbye.'

A slight frown, but gone in a moment. 'Is she then, so much softer than I? So much more willing than I? So much more passionate, than I?'

He cursed the flush on his cheeks. 'None of those things, Meg.'

'Is she, then, insistent that you declare your love, and make an honest woman of her to the world?' 'Of course not.'

'Are you, then, bent on becoming a Quaker yourself?' 'Good lord, no. But ...'

'But you fear my displeasure, my jealousy, will remain ever between us, like a bolster across our bed.'

'I ..." he chewed his lip. 'No doubt you have said it.'

'Then tell me this, my darling. Do you love your Danish mate?'

He sighed. 'I wish I knew. God, I wish I knew. I have liked her, admired her, perhaps even have I wanted her, since the day we met, and this is a long while ago. I have felt guilty in my friendship with her, because I am not of her people, her faith, even her persuasion about life.'

'And you have loved me since the day we met, which was well before you knew that creature existed. Or can a man's love only burn for a limited number of years?'

'I told you,' he shouted. 'I do not know. I do not know anything, for certain, at this moment. Last night I was drunk. I got drunk because of our quarrel. And then there was Lilian ...'

'And you are still the buccaneer,' she said. 'When drunk. Oh, do not suppose I am carping. That is why I love you. But when you are sober you are the man who would set the world to rights, and you imagine this particular world can be set right by leaving me to live with that girl.'

'Can you suggest an alternative?'

'To such folly? That would be hard. I told you, when first we lay together in this bed, Kit, when the time comes, you may lie on whom you please. Only do not love her as you love me. I do not believe that you do love this girl as you love me. If you must have her body, then do so. Build her a house, and set her up as your mistress. If I may offer a word of advice, do it down in Falmouth, where she will be removed from the immediate criticism of the Quakers or those who thoroughly dislike them. Visit her as you please. But be sure you come back to Green Grove when you are done. And be sure that I will be waiting for you.'

'You would accept such a situation?'

Marguerite smiled at him. 'You are my husband, my darling. Those children down there on the verandah are yours as much as mine. This plantation is held in our joint names, our joint strengths, for our joint purpose. I have had the best ten years of your life, and you have had the best ten years of mine. We shall come together again, God willing. I shall not throw you over for the first hole that attracts you, when drunk. And I shall expect you to possess, or to cultivate, a similar sense of

perspective.' She got up, put her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him on the cheek. 'Now come, and I will assist you in your bath.'

So, then, there were two qualities of fear. Or apprehension. Or concern. This was a much more gentle emotion.

It was a glorious morning, with the sun reaching out of the ocean to dominate a cloudless sky. His horse nibbled grass by the road, and to his left he could just make out the steeple of the St John's church. But on the beach to the south of the town and the harbour was he sufficiently alone. And here he waited. He had left the message with Agrippa, and Agrippa had looked at him for some seconds, his eyes sadly aware of the truth. And yet, what more could he do? He would have to be a man of steel to turn his back on this.

And yet he could not doubt the evil he was setting in motion at this moment.

For she was here, walking her horse along the side of the road, right knee high on the saddle, left toes firmly thrust into her stirrup. She wore her grey gown and her grey hat; seen from a distance she was no more than a woman. Only as she turned off the road to walk her mount down the beach did he recognize the glint of golden hair at her shoulder, the solemn face relaxing into a smile as she saw him.

He stood beside the horse, held up his hands, and she slipped from the saddle. He caught her under the armpits, and as he set her on the sand, brought her close. How tall she was. He had not noticed before. To kiss her on the mouth he had to do no more than bend his head, whereas to kiss Marguerite on the mouth involved the movement of his own body.

'I was not sure you'd come,' he said.

He could feel her breath on his face. And now memory come flooding back like a wave from the sea. So it had been four days, and he had been drunk, when it had begun. He had spent the four days thinking of her, and he had been sober when it had finished. He remembered the silence, so unlike the murmurs and gasps of Marguerite, somewhat salutary in itself, but then he remembered too the strength in her arms as he would have released her, the power in her legs, as they wrapped themselves around him.

'Could I do otherwise?' she whispered.

And he remembered too, the blood on the sheet. For the second time in his life, he had taken a virgin, brutally and savagely. But this one had not sought an end to her own life.

He kissed her on the mouth, and her arms went round his waist.

'What of your parents?'

'I explained that you had chosen to return to Green Grove early, and had taken the mule. They asked no questions.' 'And could they not see?'

Gently she freed herself from his embrace, and walked across the sand, to stand by the rippling wavelets on the beach. 'That I was exhilarated, excited, delighted, delirious with joy, Kit? Oh, they could see that. And accurately guessed its source. But again, no more. They know that I have loved you for ten years, since that day in St Eustatius. Who else on this island of demons and blacks might a woman love, Kit? You are like this breeze which blows in from the Atlantic, fresh and clean where all is sweat and filth. But they trust my good sense, my good judgement. Even as they trust yours. I was happy to have you in the house, no more.'

'Then am I doubly damned,' he said, walking beside her.

'Marguerite?'

He gave a short laugh. 'She bears you no grudge, Lilian. Oh, I did not tell her. She greeted me with a simple statement of fact. She judges all others in the light of herself, and who knows that she is not entirely correct.'

'And she was not angry?'

'Not in the least. I think she almost knew it must happen, one day.'

Lilian stopped, and turned to face him. 'But she will not let you go.'

'She produced convincing arguments to prove not only how impossible it was, but how unnecessary.'

Lilian gazed at him for some seconds. 'I never doubted she was a woman of character. And now she demands of us a similar character. Am I right?'

'Lilian ...'

'I understand my situation, Kit, believe me. I also understand yours, and hers. She is your wife. She has the first call upon your protection and your honour and your love. I am in a position of a second mortgagee. And yet, what am I to do without you? I shall never marry. I shall never know another man. I had resigned myself to never knowing one at all, before last week. How can I resign myself to that again, having known you?'

'Lilian ...' he seized her hands. 'I must be several kinds of a cur.'

She smiled at him. 'You are a man, Kit. I think and believe that you are an honourable man, so it is your misfortune to attract women. And latecomers must be trespassers. What would you have me do?'

He sucked air into his lungs. 'I could build you a house, Lilian. In Falmouth, or in the English Harbour. A house of your own, where ...'

'Where I could be alone, except when you chose to visit me, and where I would hoist a banner, here lies Christopher Hilton's mistress.'

'Lilian ...' but he bit his lip. She was speaking nothing less than the truth.

'And yet the alternative, of not seeing you again, is no less unthinkable. And I cannot see you again in my parents' house, or even secretly like this, more than once or twice. Antigua is too small.'

'Would you brave your father's displeasure? He certainly cannot take a stick to you.'

'He has that right,' she argued. 'As long as I acknowledge him as my father. But I am not afraid of sticks. I am afraid of his understanding that I, and you, Kit, are after all merely bits of flesh. He counts us both higher than that, as he counts my mother also, and Agrippa. He is a man who sees people as very very white or very very black; I am talking of their characters, you understand.'

Behind her, in St John's, a bell began to toll, steadily, incessantly.

'But if I left Marguerite, turned my back on all my responsibilities, on my children and my plantation, on my entire past and a good deal of my future, you would still be, only my mistress, Lilian.'

'Oh, of course,' she said. 'I should curse the day you sailed into St Eustatius harbour, Kit. I wish I could.' She looked along the beach towards the town. 'It is not Sunday.'

For still the bell tolled, unceasingly, urgently. And now they heard the sound of hooves, and watched Agrippa spurring his horse along the track, leaving the road to kick great clouds of sand into the air as he located them.

'Kit,' he bellowed. 'Kit. The French have landed.'

Kit released Lilian's hand, ran forward. 'The French? DuCasse, you mean?'

'Who knows, Kit? A fleet, they say, of five French ships, down at Falmouth. But that is not the worst of it. You will remember that Mr Harding claimed they have been in these waters for some time. No doubt he was right. They were waiting for assistance. There are Carib war canoes with them.'

'Caribs?' For a moment his imagination could not grasp the fact. There had been no Carib raid on Antigua for forty years. 'Christ Almighty. I must ..." he checked, and turned, and felt her hand on his arm.

'You must go to Green Grove, Kit. And quickly. You yourself said St John's would be safe enough. It is the plantations they will attack.'

Still he hesitated.

'She is right, Kit,' Agrippa said. 'You must defend your wife and family. I will see Lilian safely home, and protect her afterwards, and come to your aid as soon as it may be done.'

Marguerite, in the hands of naked red men. He had heard all the talcs from the past. Anthony and Rebecca, their brains carelessly dashed away. He hesitated for the last time, kissed Lilian on the mouth, and then ran for his horse.

8

The Avengers

Wisps of smoke, clinging to the clear morning air. Goodwood? Goodwood was surely farther inland. And even if it was Goodwood, Kit could spare no aid in that direction. In front of him the sky remained clear. For how long?

He reined at the top of the rise, drew the back of his hand across his forehead. Now the smoke clung to his right. And now too he looked down on Green Grove. And on a scene he had not expected to witness in his life. He watched the slaves streaming out of the fields, running carelessly across the ratoons, across the paths, shouting and screaming as they made for the village. But what would they find there? Even the leper colony would be safer.

And then the house. The shutters were being closed, and muskets were emerging at the loopholes. He watched two of the overseers driving the horses from the stables; they bore the Green Grove brand and could be easily rounded up again after the invaders had gone. But time was already short. There were people moving to the right, on the very borders of the plantation. People or ants? Their numbers seemed to grow as he watched; a horde of little specks. Red ants.

Kit kicked his horse and sent it down the road, bending low over the animal's neck. This day he was unarmed. He had not left the plantation to fight anyone this morning.

He thundered through the opened gate and up the drive, scattering the fleeing slaves, while the men on the verandah of the Great House stopped work to stare at him.

'Kit.' Marguerite ran out of the front door. 'Oh, thank God you are here. I did not know ...' She checked, aware that her overseers were staring at her, at the unaccustomed sight of their mistress afraid. She wore her planting clothes but yet looked more untidy than usual; Rebecca clung to her skirt. She knew where he had gone this morning, and why. She had not known which he would choose at a moment like this. An invasion was beyond the experience of even Marguerite Hilton.

'I came as soon as I heard the news.' He hurried up the steps. 'There are Indians not a mile away.'

'Oh, Christ,' she said. 'Oh, Christ. Kit, what are we to do?'

He turned, gazed at the plantation, at the slaves flooding through the gate. They seemed to lose their purpose as they entered the compound itself, and milled around, shouting and weeping.

'Give me that,' Kit snapped, and whipped a musket from Burns' trembling hands, pointed it in the air, and fired. The hubbub stopped, and the crowd faced the verandah. 'Go to the village,' Kit shouted. 'Go to your huts and stay there. These people have no quarrel with you. Their fight is with us. Stay inside until the Indians have been beaten off.'

The Negroes stared at him, but already the foremen were marshalling them and pushing them down the hill.

'Their huts will not save them,' Marguerite said.

'From what? Slavery by the Indians? Their lot will hardly be worsened,' Kit said. 'And it is our best hope of retaining any of them afterwards.'

'If we are alive to do so. Look there.' She pointed up the hill behind the house, at the smoke rising from the fields, and at the row of figures which stood on the skyline, constantly growing in numbers, naked men, carrying hatchets and bows and arrows, their copper-brown bodies glinting in the sun.

'Quickly,' Kit snapped. 'Women and children into the cellar. Mr Burn, you will stand by the trap and make ready to close it. And be sure, Burn, when I give the order to bolt the trap, do so and open it for no one save your mistress or myself, and even then when you are sure the savages have withdrawn. Mr Passmore, get those windows shuttered, and quickly. Muskets, lads, muskets. Three to every man, and loaded. A man to each window. They may well assault all four walls at once.' Christ, to remember, what Susan would have done. What Susan had done, once. Without success. But surely, as he had boasted, this house resolutely defended, would prove too strong for naked savages.

'You are splendid,' Marguerite whispered. 'Splendid. I never knew how splendid until this moment, Kit.'

'Tell me that after I have won. Now get downstairs with the children. And take your domestic girls, too.'

'I have already sent them,' Marguerite said. 'But I will stay here. I have no wish to be incarcerated in that cellar. And I can handle a musket as well as any man here, saving yourself.'

He stared into her face, his emotion sucking at her sparkling green eyes, her flared nostrils, her parted lips. Here was beauty, and more than beauty, because of the strength which supported it. Which supported him. Christ, that a man should ever have to choose between such demoniac magnificence and such perfect femininity.

He kissed her on the forehead. 'Then stay close to me.'

The shriek alerted him, and he looked at the charging Caribs, flooding down the hillside, waving their weapons, howling like a pack of dogs.

Dogs. 'Loose the dogs,' he shouted at Webster the carpenter. 'Loose the dogs. Poor beasts,' he muttered. 'Yet will they slow them up.'

The mastiffs issued from the kennels below the front steps, setting up a howl to match that of the Caribs, bounding across the compound as the first of the redmen came swarming through the gate. And even the dread cannibals were given pause by the dozen monsters hurling themselves forward.

'Mr Allingham,' Kit bellowed. 'Twenty men. Here, with muskets and spares on the front verandah. Here will be the main attack.'

The overseers and book-keepers came clattering on to the verandah, crouched there, muskets primed. At the gate the Caribs checked to receive the onslaught of the dogs, coming straight as bullets themselves, hurling themselves at the copper-brown throats before them. Several of the Caribs fell, then the others rallied, encouraged by the waving sword held by a tall man who now hurried to the front.

'There,' Marguerite said, pointing. 'Bring him down. Kit, and the battle is won. Bring him down.'

Kit strained his eyes; the tall man was too far away to see his face clearlv. 'He is bevond range.'

'Then when he comes within range. He will lead them. Kit.

He has all the courage of my family. I will say that for him. He will be in the front. So bring him down.' The words came from her lips like drops of vitriol. Kit stared at her, and then turned back to look at the big man.

Indian Warner, he thought. The legend, come to life. To raid his own niece's plantation? Did his hatred run as deep, have a core as vicious, as hers?

'They're coming.' Passmore's voice shook.

The dogs were dead, scattered mounds of red flesh. And half a dozen of the Caribs also lay on the trampled earth of the compound, the earth where, he suddenly remembered, the Negroes had danced and cheered on his wedding night, ten years ago.

'Sight your pieces,' he said. 'Easy now, lads. Sight your pieces. Make each shot tell.'

But their hands shook, and their faces were ashen. They were overseers. They rode confidently enough behind a cart-whip, with pistols in their belts, when those opposed to them had nothing. But these swarming red men were armed, and as vicious as themselves. So their hands shook, and the sweat stood out on their foreheads.

All except one. Marguerite was at the end of the line, her hands tiny wisps of white on the stock and barrel of her musket. She sweated, but her hands were steady. By Christ, he thought, to have no more than a dozen of Morgan's men beside me here. To have but one. To have Agrippa.