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TEN YEARS LATER...

Book One

BARBADOS

Chapter One

No sooner had their carriage creaked to a halt at the edge of the crowd than a tumult of cheers sounded through the humid morning air. With a wry glance toward the man seated opposite, Katherine Bedford drew back the faded curtains at the window and craned to see over the cluster of planters at the water's edge, garbed in their usual ragged jerkins, gray cotton breeches, and wide, sweat-stained hats. Across the bay, edging into view just beyond the rocky cliff of Lookout Point, were the tattered, patched sails of the Zeelander, a Dutch trader well known to Barbados.

"It's just rounding the Point now." Her voice was hard, with more than a trace of contempt. "From here you'd scarcely know what their cargo was. It looks the same as always."

As she squinted into the light, a shaft of Caribbean sun candled her deep-blue eyes. Her long ringlet curls were drawn back and secured with a tiara of Spanish pearls, a halfhearted attempt at demureness spoiled by the nonchalant strands dangling across her forehead. The dark tan on her face betrayed her devotion to the sea and the sun; although twenty-three years of life had ripened her body, her high cheeks had none of the plump, anemic pallor so prized in English women.

"Aye, but this time she's very different, Katy, make no mistake. Nothing in the Americas will ever be the same again. Not after today." Governor Dalby Bedford was across from her in the close, airless carriage, angrily gripping the silver knob of his cane. Finally he bent forward to look too, and for a moment their faces were framed side by side. The likeness could scarcely have been greater: not only did they share the same intense eyes, there was a similar high forehead and determined chin. "Damned to them. It's a shameful morning for us all."

"Just the same, you've got to go down and be there." Though she despised the thought as much as he did, she realized he had no choice. The planters all knew Dalby Bedford had opposed the plan from the beginning, had argued with the Council for weeks before arrangements were finally made with the Dutch shippers. But the vote had gone against him, and now he had to honor it accordingly.

While he sat watching the Zeelander make a starboard tack, coming about to enter the bay, Katherine leaned across the seat and pulled aside the opposite curtain. The hot wind that suddenly stirred past was a sultry harbinger of the coastal breeze now sweeping up the hillside, where field after identical field was lined with rows of tall, leafy stalks, green and iridescent in the sun.

The new Barbados is already here, she thought gloomily. The best thing now is to face it.

Without a word she straightened her tight, sweaty bodice, gathered her wrinkled skirt, and opened the carriage door. She waved aside the straw parasol that James, their Irish servant and footman, tried to urge on her and stepped into the harsh midday sun. Dalby Bedford nodded at the crowd, then climbed down after.

He was tall and, unlike his careless daughter, always groomed to perfection. Today he wore a tan waistcoat trimmed with wide brown lace and a white cravat that matched the heron-feather plume in his wide-brimmed hat. Over the years, the name of Dalby Bedford had become a byword for freedom in the Americas: under his hand Barbados had been made a democracy, and virtually independent of England. First he had convinced the king's proprietor to reduce rents on the island, then he had created an elected Assembly of small freeholders to counter the high-handed rule of the powerful Council. He had won every battle, until this one.

Katherine moved through the crowd of black-hatted planters as it parted before them. Through the shimmering glare of the sand she could just make out the commanding form of Anthony Walrond farther down by the shore, together with his younger brother Jeremy. Like hundreds of other royalists, they had been deported to Barbados in the aftermath of England's Civil War. Now Anthony spotted their carriage and started up the incline toward them, and for an instant she found herself wishing she'd thought to wear a more fashionable bodice.

"Your servant, sir." A gruff greeting, aimed toward Dalby Bedford, disrupted her thoughts. She looked back to see a heavyset planter riding his horse directly through the crowd, with the insistent air of a man who demands deference. Swinging down from his wheezing mount, he tossed the reins to the servant who had ridden with him and began to shove his way forward, fanning his open gray doublet against the heat.

Close to fifty and owner of the largest plantation on the island, Benjamin Briggs was head of the Council, that governing body of original settlers appointed years before by the island's proprietor in London. His sagging, leathery face was formidable testimony to twenty years of hard work and even harder drink. The planters on the Council had presided over Barbados' transformation from a tropical rain forest to a patchwork of tobacco and cotton plantations, and now to what they hoped would soon be a factory producing white gold.

Briggs pushed back his dusty hat and turned to squint approvingly as the frigate began furling its mainsail in preparation to drop anchor. "God be praised, we're almost there. The years of starvation are soon to be over."

Katherine noted that she had not been included in his greeting. She had once spoken her mind to Benjamin Briggs concerning his treatment of his indentures more frankly than he cared to hear. Even now, looking at him, she was still amazed that a man once a small Bristol importer had risen to so much power in the Americas. Part of that success, she knew, derived from his practice of lending money to hard-pressed freeholders at generous rates but short terms, then foreclosing on their lands the moment the sight bills came due.

"It's an evil precedent for the English settlements, mark my word." Bedford gazed back toward the ship. He and Benjamin Briggs had been sworn enemies from the day he first proposed establishing the Assembly. "I tell you again it'll open the way for fear and divisiveness throughout the Americas."

"It's our last chance for prosperity, sir. All else has failed," Briggs responded testily. "I know it and so do you."

Before the governor could reply, Anthony Walrond was joining them.

"Your servant, sir." He touched his plumed hat toward Dalby Bedford, conspicuously ignoring Briggs as he merged into their circle, Jeremy at his heel.

Anthony Walrond was thirty-five and the most accomplished, aristocratic man Katherine had ever met, besides her father. His lean, elegant face was punctuated by an eye-patch, worn with the pride of an epaulette, that came from a sword wound in the bloody royalist defeat at Marston Moor. After he had invested and lost a small fortune in support of the king's failed cause, he had been exiled to Barbados, his ancestral estate sequestrated by Parliament.

She still found herself incredulous that he had, only four weeks earlier, offered marriage. Why, she puzzled, had he proposed the match? He was landed, worldly, and had distinguished himself during the war. She had none of his style and polish....

"Katherine, your most obedient." He bowed lightly, then stood back to examine her affectionately. She was a bit brash, it was true, and a trifle--well, more than a trifle--forward for her sex. But underneath her blunt, seemingly impulsive way he sensed a powerful will. She wasn't afraid to act on her convictions, and the world be damned. So let her ride her mare about the island daylong now if she chose; there was breeding about her that merely wanted some refinement.

"Sir, your servant." Katherine curtsied lightly and repressed a smile. No one knew she had quietly invited Anthony Walrond riding just two weeks earlier. The destination she had picked was a deserted little islet just off the windward coast, where they could be alone. Propriety, she told herself, was all very well, but marrying a man for life was no slight matter. Anthony Walrond, it turned out, had promise of being all she could want.

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

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

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

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

They all stood awkwardly for a moment, each wondering what the ship would signify for their own future and that of the island. Katherine feared that for her it would mean the end of Barbados' few remaining forests, hidden groves upland where she could ride alone and think. Cultivated land was suddenly so valuable that all trees would soon vanish. It was the last anyone would see of an island part untamed and free.

Depressed once more by the prospect, she turned and stared down the shore, toward the collection of clapboard taverns clustered around the narrow bridge at the river mouth. Adjacent to the taverns was a makeshift assemblage of tobacco sheds, open shops, and bawdy houses, which taken together had become known as Bridgetown. The largest "town" on Barbados, it was now all but empty. Everyone, even the tavern keepers and Irish whores, had come out to watch.

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

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

"God's life, don't tell me he's come back." Briggs first noticed the stranger when he was already halfway through the crowd. He sucked in his breath and whirled to survey the line of Dutch merchantmen anchored in the shallows along the shore. Nothing. But farther down, near the careenage at the river mouth, a battered frigate rode at anchor. The ship bore no flag, but the word Defiance was crudely lettered across the stern.

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

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

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

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

"I'm afraid I already know what they're shipping. I picked a hell of a day to come back." The stranger rubbed absently at a long scar across one cheek, then continued, as though to himself, "Damn me, I should have guessed all along this would be the way.''

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You mean that business about your frigate?"

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

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

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

"What do you mean?"

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

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

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

"Exactly. He also brought back something else for Briggs." She smiled. "Can you guess?"

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

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

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

"I made one mistake, helping this island." Winston glanced at the ship and his eyes were momentarily pained. "I don't plan to make another." Then he turned and stared past the crowd, toward the green fields patch-worked against the hillsides inland. "But I see your cane prospered well enough. When do we talk?"

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

"Yor Worship." Timothy Farrell, one of Briggs' many indentured servants, bowed sullenly as he came forward, then doffed his straw hat, squinting against the sun. His voice still carried the musical lilt of his native Kinsale, where he had been offered the choice, not necessarily easy, between prison for debt and indentured labor in sweltering Barbados. He had finally elected Barbados when informed, falsely, that he would receive a grant of five acres of land after his term of servitude expired-- a practice long since abandoned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

After a moment he glanced back and began to examine her with open curiosity, his eyes playing over her face, then her tight bodice. Finally he shifted one of the pistols in his belt, turned, and began strolling down the sloping sand toward the bay.

Well, damn his cheek.

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

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

Forget it, he told himself, you've enough to think about today. Starting with the Zeelander. And her cargo.

The sight of that three-masted fluyt brought back so many places and times. Brazil, Rotterdam, Virginia, even Barbados. Her captain Johan Ruyters had changed his life, that day the Zeelander hailed his bullet-riddled longboat adrift in the Windward Passage. Winston had lost track of the time a bit now, but not of the term Ruyters had made him serve in return for the rescue. Three years, three miserable years of short rations, doubled watches, and no pay.

Back when he served on the Zeelander her cargo had been mostly brown muscavado sugar, ferried home to Rotterdam from Holland's newly captive plantations in Brazil. But there had been a change in the world since then. The Dutch had seized a string of Portuguese trading fortresses along the coast of West Africa. Now, at last, they had access to a commodity far more profitable than sugar.

He reflected on Ruyters' first axiom of successful trade: sell what's in demand. And if there's no demand for what you've got, make it.

New sugar plantations would provide the surest market of all for what the Dutch now had to sell. So in the spring of 1642 Ruyters had left a few bales of Brazilian sugarcane with Benjamin Briggs, then a struggling tobacco planter on Barbados, suggesting that he try growing it and refining sugar from the sap, explaining the Portuguese process as best he could.

It had been a night over two years past, at Joan's place, when Briggs described what had happened after that.

"The cane grew well enough, aye, and I managed to press out enough of the sap to try rendering it to sugar. But nothing else worked. I tried boiling it in pots and then letting it sit, but what I got was scarcely more than molasses and mud. It's not as simple as I thought." Then he had unfolded his new scheme. "But if you'll take some of us on the Council down to Brazil, sir, the Dutchmen claim they'll let us see how the Portugals do it. We'll soon know as much about sugar-making as any Papist. There'll be a fine fortune in it, I promise you, for all of us."

But how, he'd asked Briggs, did they expect to manage all the work of cutting the cane?

"These indentures, sir. We've got thousands of them."

He'd finally agreed to accept the Council's proposition. And the Defiance was ideal for the run. Once an old Spanish cargo vessel, he'd disguised her by chopping away the high fo'c'sle, removing the pilot's cabin, and lowering the quarterdeck. Next he'd re-rigged her, opened more gunports in the hull, and installed new cannon. Now she was a heavily armed fighting brig and swift.

Good God, he thought, how could I have failed to see? It had to come to this; there was no other way.

So maybe it's time I did something my own way for a change. Yes, by God, maybe there's an answer to all this.

He thought again of the sight bills, now locked in the Great Cabin of the Defiance and payable in one week. Two thousand pounds. It would be a miracle if the Council could find the coin to settle the debt, but they did have something he needed.

And either way, Master Briggs, I intend to have satisfaction, or I may just take your balls for a bell buoy.

Now a white shallop was being lowered over the gunwales of the Zeelander, followed by oarsmen. Then after a measured pause a new figure, wearing the high collar and wide-brimmed hat of Holland's merchant class, appeared at the railing. His plump face was punctuated with a goatee, and his smile was visible all the way to the shore. He stood a long moment, dramatically surveying the low-lying hills of Barbados, and then Captain Johan Ruyters began lowering himself down the swaying rope ladder.

As the shallop nosed through the surf and eased into the sandy shallows, Dalby Bedford moved to the front of the receiving delegation, giving no hint how bitterly he had opposed the arrangement Briggs and the Council had made with the Dutch shippers.

"Your servant, Captain."

"Your most obedient servant, sir." Ruyters' English was heavily accented but otherwise flawless. Winston recalled he could speak five languages as smoothly as oil, and shortchange the fastest broker in twice that many currencies. "It is a fine day for Barbados."

"How went the voyage?" Briggs asked, stepping forward and thrusting out his hand, which Ruyters took readily, though with a wary gathering of his eyebrows.

"A fair wind, taken for all. Seventy-four days and only some fifteen percent wastage of the cargo. Not a bad figure for the passage, though still enough to make us friends of the sharks. But I've nearly three hundred left, all prime."

"Are they strapping?" Briggs peered toward the ship, and his tone sharpened slighdy, signaling that social pleasantries were not to be confused with commerce. "Remember we'll be wantin' them for the fields, not for the kitchen."

"None stronger in the whole west of Africa. These are not from the Windward Coast, mark you, where I grant what you get is fit mostly for house duty. I took half this load from Cape Verde, on the Guinea coast, and then sailed on down to Benin, by the Niger River delta, for the rest. These Nigers make the strongest field workers. There is even a chief amongst them, a Yoruba warrior. I've seen a few of these Yoruba Nigers in Brazil, and I can tell you this one could have the wits to make you a first-class gang driver." Ruyters shaded his eyes against the sun and lowered his voice. "In truth, I made a special accommodation with the agent selling him, which is how I got so many hardy ones. Usually I have to take a string of mixed quality, which I get with a few kegs of gunpowder for the chiefs and maybe some iron, together with a few beads and such for their wives. But I had to barter five chests of muskets and a hundred strings of their cowrie-shell money for this Yoruba. After that, though, I got the pick of his boys."

Ruyters stopped and peered past the planters for a second, his face mirroring disbelief. Then he grinned broadly and shoved through the crowd, extending his hand toward Winston. "By the blood of Christ. I thought sure you'd be hanged by now. How long has it been? Six years? Seven?" He laughed and pumped Winston's hand vigorously, then his voice sobered. "Not here to spy on the trade I hope? I'd best beware or you're like to be eyeing my cargo next."

"You can have it." Winston extracted his hand, reflecting with chagrin that he himself had been the instrument of what was about to occur.

"What say, now?" Ruyters smiled to mask his relief. "Aye, but to be sure this is an easy business." He turned back to the planters as he continued. "It never fails to amaze me how ready their own people are to sell them. They spy your sail when you're several leagues at sea and build a smoke fire on the coast to let you know they've got cargo."

He reached for Dalby Bedford's arm, to usher him toward the waiting boat. Anthony Walrond said something quietly to Jeremy, then followed after the governor. Following on their heels was Benjamin Briggs, who tightened his belt as he waded through the shallows.

Ruyters did not fail to notice when several of the oarsmen smiled and nodded toward Winston. He was still remembered as the best first mate the Zeelander had ever had--and the only seaman anyone had ever seen who could toss a florin into the air and drill it with a pistol ball better than half the time. Finally the Dutch captain turned back, beckoning.

"It'd be an honor if you would join us, sir. As long as you don't try taking any of my lads with you."

Winston hesitated a moment, then stepped into the boat as it began to draw away from the shore. Around them other small craft were being untied, and the planters jostled together as they waded through the light surf and began to climb over the gunwales. Soon a small, motley flotilla was making its way toward the ship.

As Winston studied the Zeelander, he couldn't help recalling how welcome she had looked that sun-baked afternoon ten years past. In his thirsty delirium her billowing sails had seemed the wings of an angel of mercy. But she was not angelic today. She was dilapidated now, with runny patches of tar and oakum dotting her from bow to stern. By converting her into a slaver, he knew, Ruyters had discovered a prudent way to make the most of her last years.

As they eased into the shadow of her leeward side, Winston realized something else had changed. The entire ship now smelled of human excrement. He waited till Ruyters led the planters, headed by Dalby Bedford and Benjamin Briggs, up the salt-stiff rope ladder, then followed after.

The decks were dingy and warped, and there was a haggard look in the men's eyes he didn't recall from before. Profit comes at a price, he thought, even for quick Dutch traders.

Ruyters barked an order to his quartermaster, and moments later the main hatch was opened. Immediately the stifling air around the frigate was filled with a chorus of low moans from the decks below.

Winston felt Briggs seize his arm and heard a hoarse whisper. "Take a look and see how it's done. It's said the Dutchmen have learned the secret of how best to pack them."

"I already know how a slaver's cargoed." He pulled back his arm and thought again of the Dutch slave ships that had been anchored in the harbor at Pernambuco. "A slave's chained on his back, on a shelf, for the whole of the voyage, if he lives that long." He pointed toward the hold. "Why not go on down and have a look for yourself?''

Briggs frowned and turned to watch as the quartermaster yelled orders to several seamen, all shirtless and squinting in the sun, who cursed under their breath as they began reluctantly to make their way down the companionway to the lower deck. The air in the darkened hold was almost unbreathable.

The clank of chains began, and Winston found himself drawn against his will to the open hatchway to watch. As the cargo was unchained from iron loops fastened to the side of the ship, their manacled hands were looped through a heavy line the seamen passed along the length of the lower deck.

Slowly, shakily, the first string of men began to emerge from the hold. Their feet and hands were still secured with individual chains, and all were naked. As each struggled up from the hold, he would stare into the blinding sun for a confused moment, as though to gain bearings, then turn in bewilderment to gaze at the green beyond, so like and yet so alien from the African coast. Finally, seeing the planters, he would stretch to cover his groin with manacled hands, the hesitation prompting a Dutch seaman to lash him forward.

The Africans' black skin shone in the sun, the result of a forced diet of cod liver oil the last week of the voyage. Then too, there had been a quick splash with seawater on the decks below, followed by swabbing with palm oil, when the Zeelander's maintopman had sighted the low green peaks of Barbados rising out of the sea. They seemed stronger than might have been expected, the effect of a remedial diet of salt fish the last three days of the voyage.

"Well, sir, what think you of the cargo?" Ruyters' face was aglow.

Winston winced. "Better your vessel than mine."

"But it's no great matter to ship these Africans. The truth is we don't really even have to keep them fettered once we pass sight of land, since they're too terrified to revolt. We feed them twice a day with meal boiled up into a mush, and every other day or so we give them some English horsebeans, which they seem to favor. Sometimes we even bring them up topside to feed, whilst we splash down the decks below." He smiled and swept the assembled bodies with his eyes. "That's why we have so little wastage. Not like the Spaniards or Portugals, who can easily lose a quarter or more to shark feed through overpacking and giving them seawater to drink. But I'll warrant the English'll try to squeeze all the profit they can one day, when your ships take up the trade, and then you'll doubtless see wastage high as the Papists have."

"English merchants'll never take up the slave trade."

Ruyters gave a chuckle. "Aye but that they will, as I'm a Christian, and soon enough too." He glanced in the direction of Anthony Walrond. "Your London shippers'll take up anything we do that shows a florin's profit. But we'll give you a run for it." He turned back to Briggs. "What say you, sir? Are they to your liking?"

"I take it they're a mix? Like we ordered?"

"Wouldn't load them any other way. There's a goodly batch of Yoruba, granted, but the rest are everything from Ibo and Ashanti to Mandingo. There's little chance they'll be plotting any revolts. Half of them are likely blood enemies of the other half."

The first mate lashed the line forward with a cat-o'-nine-tails, positioning them along the scuppers. At the head was a tall man whose alert eyes were already studying the forested center of the island. Winston examined him for a moment, recalling the haughty Yoruba slaves he had seen in Brazil.

"Is that the chief you spoke of?"

Ruyters glanced at the man a moment. "They mostly look the same to me, but aye, I think that's the one. Prince Atiba, I believe they called him. A Niger and pure Yoruba."

"He'll never be made a slave."

"Won't he now? You'll find the cat can work wonders.'' Ruyters turned and took the cat-o'-nine-tails from the mate. "He'll jump just like the rest." With a quick flick he lashed it against the African's back. The man stood unmoving, without even a blink. He drew back and struck him a second time, now harder. The Yoruba's jaw tightened visibly but he still did not flinch. As Ruyters drew back for a third blow, Winston reached to stay his arm.

"Enough. Take care or he may prove a better man than you'd wish to show."

Before Ruyters could respond, Briggs moved to begin the negotiations.

"What terms are you offering, sir?"

"Like we agreed." Ruyters turned back. "A quarter now, with sight bills for another quarter in six months and the balance on terms in a year."

"Paid in bales of tobacco at standing rates? Or sugar, assuming we've got it then?"

"I've yet to see two gold pieces keeping company together on the whole of the island." He snorted. "I suppose it'll have to be. What do you say to the usual exchange rate?"

"I say we can begin. Let's start with the best, and not trouble with the bidding candle yet. I'll offer you a full twenty pounds for the first one there." Briggs pointed at the Yoruba.

The Dutch captain examined him in disbelief. "This is not some indentured Irishman, sir. This is a robust field hand you'll own for life. And he has all the looks of a good breeder. My conscience wouldn't let me entertain a farthing under forty."

"Would you take some of my acres too? Is there no profit to be had in him?"

"These Africans'll pay themselves out for you in one good year, two at the most. Just like they do in Brazil." Ruyters smiled. "And this is the very one that cost me a fortune in muskets. It's only because I know you for a gentleman that I'd even think of offering him on such easy terms. He's plainly the pick of the string."

Winston turned away and gazed toward the shore. The price would be thirty pounds. He knew Ruyters' bargaining practices all too well. The sight of the Zeelander's decks sickened him almost as much as the slaves. He wanted to get to sea again, to leave Barbados and its greedy Puritans far behind.

But this time, he told himself, you're the one who needs them. Just a little longer and there'll be a reckoning.

And after that, Barbados can be damned.

"Thirty pounds then, and may God forgive me." Ruyters was slapping Briggs genially on the shoulder. "But you'll be needing a lot more for the acres you want to cut. Why not take the rest of this string at a flat twenty-five pounds the head, and make an end on it? It'll spare both of us time."

"Twenty-five!"

"Make it twenty then." Ruyters lowered his voice. "But not a shilling under, God is my witness."

"By my life, you're a conniving Moor, passing himself as a Dutchman." Briggs mopped his brow. "It's time for the candle, sir. They're scarcely all of the same quality."

"I'll grant you. Some should fetch well above twenty. I ventured the offer thinking a gentleman of your discernment might grasp a bargain when he saw it. But as you will." He turned and spoke quickly to his quartermaster, a short, surly seaman who had been with the Zeelander almost as long as Ruyters. The officer disappeared toward the Great Cabin and returned moments later with several long white candles, marked with rings at one-inch intervals. He fitted one into a holder and lit the wick.

"We'll begin with the next one in the string." Ruyters pointed to a stout, gray-bearded man. "Gentlemen, what am I bid?"

"Twelve pounds."

"Fifteen."

"Fifteen pounds ten."

"Sixteen."

As Winston watched the bidding, he found his gaze drifting more and more to the Yoruba Briggs had just purchased. The man was meeting his stare now, eye to eye, almost a challenge.

There were three small scars lined down one cheek--the clan marks Yoruba warriors were said to wear to prevent inadvertently killing another clan member in battle. He was naked and in chains, but he held himself like a born aristocrat.

"Eighteen and ten." Briggs was eyeing the flickering candle as he yelled the bid. At that moment the first dark ring disappeared.

"The last bid on the candle was Mr. Benjamin Briggs." Ruyters turned to his quartermaster, who was holding an open account book, quill pen in hand. "At eighteen pounds ten shillings. Mark it and let's get on with the next one."

Winston moved slowly back toward the main deck, studying the first Yoruba more carefully now--the glistening skin that seemed to stretch over ripples of muscle. And the quick eyes, seeing everything.

What a fighting man he'd make. He'd snap your neck while you were still reaching for your pistol. It could've been a big mistake not to try and get him. But then what? How'd you make him understand anything? Unless...

He remembered that some of the Yoruba in Brazil, still fresh off the slave ships, already spoke Portuguese. Learned from the traders who'd worked the African coast for... God only knows how long. The Portugals in Brazil always claimed you could never tell about a Yoruba. They were like Moors, sharp as tacks.

His curiosity growing, he edged next to the man, still attempting to hold his eyes, then decided to try him.

"Fala portugues?''

Atiba started in surprise, shot a quick glance toward the crowd of whites, then turned away, as though he hadn't heard. Winston moved closer and lowered his voice.

"Fala portugues, senhor?"

After a long moment he turned back and examined Winston.

"Sim. Suficiente.'' His whisper was almost buried in the din of bidding. He paused a moment, then continued, in barely audible Portuguese. "How many of my people will you try to buy, senhor?"

"Only free men serve under my command.'

"Then you have saved yourself the loss of many strings of money shells, senhor. The branco here may have escaped our sword for now. But they have placed themselves in our scabbard." He looked back toward the shore. "Before the next rainy season comes, you will see us put on the skin of the leopard. I swear to you in the name of Ogun, god of war."

Chapter Two

Joan Fuller sighed and gently eased herself out of the clammy feather bed, unsure why she felt so oddly listless. Like as not it was the patter of the noonday shower, now in full force, gusting through the open jalousies in its daily drenching of the tavern's rear quarters. A shower was supposed to be cooling, so why did she always feel hotter and more miserable afterwards? Even now, threads of sweat lined down between her full breasts, inside the curve of each long leg. She moved quietly to the window and one by one began tilting the louvres upward, hoping to shut out some of the salty mist.

Day in and day out, the same pattern. First the harsh sun, then the rain, then the sun again. Mind you, it had brought to life all those new rows of sugar cane marshalled down the hillsides, raising hope the planters might eventually settle their accounts in something besides weedy tobacco. But money mattered so little anymore. Time, that's the commodity no purse on earth could buy. And the Barbados sun and rain, day after day, were like a heartless cadence marking time's theft of the only thing a woman had truly worth holding on to.

The tropical sun and salt air would be telling enough on the face of some girl of twenty, but for a woman all but thirty--well, in God's own truth some nine years past--it was ruination. Still, there it was, every morning, like a knife come to etch deeper those telltale lines at the corners of her eyes. And after she'd frayed her plain brown hair coloring it with yellow dye, hoping to bring out a bit of the sparkle in her hazel eyes, she could count on the harsh salt wind to finish turning it to straw. God damn miserable Barbados.

As if there weren't bother enough, now Hugh was back, the whoremaster, half ready to carry on as though he'd never been gone. When you both knew the past was past.

But why not just make the most of whatever happens... and time be damned.

She turned and glanced back toward the bed. He was awake now too, propped up on one elbow, groggily watching. For a moment she thought she might have disturbed him getting up--in years past he used to grumble about that--but then she caught the look in his eyes.

What the pox. In truth it wasn't always so bad, having him back now and again....

Slowly her focus strayed to the dark hair on his chest, the part not lightened to rust by the sun, and she realized she was the one who wanted him. This minute.

But she never hinted that to Hugh Winston. She never gave him the least encouragement. She kept the whoreson off balance, else he'd lose interest. After you got to know him the way she did, you realized Hugh fancied the chase. As she started to look away, he smiled and beckoned her over. Just like she'd figured...

She adjusted the other shutters, then took her own sweet time strolling back. Almost as though he weren't even there. Then she casually settled onto the bed, letting him see the fine profile of her breasts, and just happening to drape one long leg where he could manage to touch it.

But now she was beginning to be of two minds. God's life, it was too damned hot, Hugh or no.

He ignored her ankle and, for some reason, reached out and silently drew one of his long brown fingers down her cheek. Very slowly. She stifled a shiver, reminding herself she'd had quite enough of men in general, and Hugh Winston in particular, to do a lifetime.

But, still...

Before she realized it, he'd lifted back her yellow hair and kissed her deeply on the mouth. Suddenly it was all she could manage, keeping her hands on the mattress.

Then he faltered, mumbled something about the heat, and plopped back onto the sweat-soaked sheet.

Well, God damn him too.

She studied his face again, wondering why he seemed so distracted this trip. It wasn't like Hugh to let things get under his skin. Though admittedly affairs were going poorly for him now, mainly because of the damned Civil War in England. Since he didn't trouble about taxes, he'd always undersold English shippers. But after the war had disrupted things so much, the American settlements were wide open to the cut-rate Hollanders, who could sell and ship cheaper than anybody alive. These days the Butterboxes were everywhere; you could look out the window and see a dozen Dutch merchantmen anchored right in Carlisle Bay. Ever since that trip for the Council he'd been busy running whatever he could get between Virginia and some other place he hadn't said--yet he had scarcely a shilling to show for his time. Why else would he have paid that flock of shiftless runaways he called a crew with the last of his savings? She knew it was all he had, and he'd just handed it over for them to drink and whore away. When would he learn?

And if you're thinking you'll collect on the Council's sight bills, dear heart, you'd best think again. Master Benjamin Briggs and the rest of that shifty lot could hold school for learned scholars on the topic of stalling obligations.

He was doubtless too proud to own it straight out, but he needn't trouble. She already knew. Hugh Winston, her lover in times past and still the only friend she had worth the bother, was down to his last farthing.

She sighed, telling herself she knew full well what it was like. God's wounds, did she know what it was like. Back when Hugh Winston was still in his first and only term at Oxford, the son of one Lord Harold Winston, before he'd been apprenticed and then sent packing out to the Caribbees, Joan Fuller was already an orphan. The hardest place you could be one. On the cobblestone streets of Billingsgate, City of London.

That's where you think you're in luck to hire out in some household for a few pennies a week, with a hag of a mistress who despises you for no more cause than you're young and pretty. Of course you steal a little at first, not too much or she'd see, but then you remember the master, who idles about the place in his greasy nightshirt half the day, and who starts taking notice after you let the gouty old whoremaster know you'd be willing to earn something extra. Finally the mistress starts to suspect--the bloodhounds always do after a while--and soon enough you're back on the cobblestones.

But you know a lot more now. So if you're half clever you'll take what you've put by and have some proper dresses made up, bright colored with ruffled petticoats, and a few hats with silk ribands. Then you pay down on a furnished lodging in Covent Garden, the first floor even though it's more than all the rest of the house. Soon you've got lots of regulars, and then eventually you make acquaintance of a certain gentleman of means who wants a pert young thing all to himself, on alternate afternoons. It lasts for going on two years, till you decide you're weary to death of the kept life. So you count up what's set by--and realize it's enough to hire passage out to Barbados.

Which someone once told you was supposed to be paradise after London, and you, like a fool, believed it. But which you discover quick enough is just a damned sweltering version of hell. You're here now though, so you take what little money's left and find yourself some girls, Irish ones who've served out their time as indentures, despise having to work, and can't wait to take up the old life, same as before they came out.

And finally you can forget all about what it was like being a penniless orphan. Trouble is, you also realize you're not so young anymore.

"Would you fancy some Hollander cheese, love? The purser from the Zeelander lifted a tub for me and there's still a bit left. And I'll warrant there's cassava bread in back, still warm from morning." She knew Hugh always called for the local bread, the hard patties baked from the powdered cassava root, rather than that from the stale, weevily flour shipped out from London.

He ran a finger contemplatively across her breasts--now they at least were still round and firm as any strutting Irish wench half her age could boast--then dropped his legs off the side of the bed and began to search for his boots.

"I could do with a tankard of sack."

The very brass of him! When he'd come back half drunk in the middle of the night, ranting about floggings or some such and waving a bottle of kill-devil. He'd climbed into bed, had his way, and promptly passed out. So instead of acting like he owned the place, he could bloody well supply an explanation.

"So how did it go yesterday?" She held her voice even, a purr. "With that business on the Zeelander?"

That wasn't the point she actually had in mind. If it hadn't been so damned hot, she'd have nailed him straight out. Something along the lines of "And where in bloody hell were you till all hours?" Or maybe "Why is't you think you can have whatever you want, the minute you want it?" That was the enquiry the situation called for.

"You missed a fine entertainment." His tone of voice told her he probably meant just the opposite.

"You're sayin' the sale went well for the Dutchmen?" She watched him shrug, then readied herself to monitor him sharply. "And after that I expect you were off drinking with the Council." She flashed a look of mock disapproval. "Doubtless passing yourself for a fine gentleman, as always?"

"I am a gentleman." He laughed and swung at her with a muddy boot, just missing as she sprang from the bed. "I just rarely trouble to own it."

"Aye, you're a gentleman, to be sure. And by that thinking I'm a virgin still, since I was doubtless that once too."

"So I've heard you claim. But that was back well before my time."

"You had rare fortune, darlin'. You got the rewards of years of expertise." She reached to pull on her brown linen shift. "And I suppose you'll be telling me next that Master Briggs and the Council can scarcely wait to settle your sight bills."

"They'll settle them in a fortnight, one way or another, or damned to them." He reached for his breeches, not the fancy ones he wore once in a while around the Council, but the canvas ones he used aboard ship, and the tone of his voice changed. "I just hope things stay on an even keel till then."

"I don't catch your meaning." She studied him openly, wondering if that meant he was already planning to leave.

"The planters' new purchase." He'd finished with the trousers and was busy with his belt. "Half of them are Yoruba."

"And, pray, what's that?" She'd thought he was going to explain more on the bit about leaving.

"I think they're a people from somewhere down around the Niger River delta."

"The Africans, you mean?" She examined him, still puzzled. "The slaves?"

"You've hit on it. The slaves. Like a fool, I didn't see it coming, but it's here, all right. May God curse Ruyters. Now I realize this is what he planned all along, the bastard, when he started telling everybody how they could get rich with cane. Save none of these Puritans knows the first thing about working Africans. He's sold them a powder keg with these Yoruba." He rose and started for the door leading into the front room of the tavern. "And they're doing all they can to spark the fuse."

"What're you tryin' to say?" She was watching him walk, something that still pleased her after all the years. But she kept on seeming to listen. When Hugh took something in his head, you'd best let him carry on about it for a time.

"They're proud and I've got a feeling they're not going to take this treatment." He turned back to look at her, finally reading her confusion. "I've seen plenty of Yoruba over the years in Brazil, and I can tell you the Papists have learned to handle them differently. They're fast and they're smart. Some of them even come off the boat already knowing Portugee. I also found out that at least one of those Ruyters sold to Briggs can speak it."

"Is that such a bad thing? It'd seem to me..."

"What I'm saying is, now that they're here, they've got to be treated like men. You can't starve them and horsewhip them the way you can Irish indentures. I've got a strong feeling they'll not abide it for long." He moved restlessly into the front room, a wood-floored space of rickety pine tables and wobbly straight chairs, plopping down by the front doorway, his gaze fixed on the misty outline of the river bridge. "I went on out to Briggs' plantation last night, thinking to talk over a certain little matter, but instead I got treated to a show of how he plans to break in his slaves. The first thing he did was flog one of his new Yoruba when he balked at eating loblolly corn mush. That's going to make for big trouble, mark it."

She studied him now and finally realized how worked up he was. Hugh usually noticed everything, yet he'd walked straight through the room without returning the groggy nods of his men, two French mates and his quartermaster John Mewes--the latter now gaming at three-handed whist with Salt-Beef Peg and Buttock-de-Clink Jenny, her two newest Irish girls.

She knew for sure Peg had noticed him, and that little sixpenny tart bloody well knew better than to breathe a word in front of her mistress.

"Well, settle down a bit." She opened the cabinet and took out an onion-flask of sack, together with two tankards. "Tell me where you're thinking you'll be going next." She dropped into the chair opposite and began uncorking the bottle. "Or am I to expect you and the lads'll be staying a while in Barbados this time?"

He laughed. "Well now, am I supposed to think it's me you're thinking about? Or is it you're just worried we might ship out while one of the lads still has a shilling left somewhere or other?"

She briefly considered hoisting the bottle she'd just fetched and cracking it over his skull, but instead she shot him a frown and turned toward the bleary-eyed gathering at the whist table. "John, did you ever hear the likes of this one, by my life? He'd have the lot of you drink and play for free."

John Mewes, a Bristol seaman who had joined Hugh years ago after jumping ship at Nevis Island, stared up groggily from his game, then glanced back at his shrinking pile of coins--shrinking as Salt-Beef Peg's had grown. His weathered cheeks were lined from drink, and, as always, his ragged hair was matted against his scalp and the jerkin covering his wide belly was stained brown with spilled grog. Inexplicably, women doted on him in taverns the length of the Caribbean.

"Aye, yor ladyship, it may soon have to be. This bawd of yours is near to takin' my last shilling, before she's scarce troubled liftin' her skirts to earn it." He took another swallow of kill-devil from his tankard, then looked imploringly toward Winston. "On my honor, Cap'n, by the look of it I'm apt to be poor as a country parson by noontide tomorrow.''

"But you're stayin' all this week with me, John." Peg was around the table and on his lap in an instant, her soft brown eyes aglow. "A promise to a lady always has to be kept. Else you'll lose your luck."

"Then shall I be havin' your full measure for the coin of love? It's near to all that's left, I'll take an oath on it. My purse's shriveled as the Pope's balls."

"For love?" Peg rose. "And I suppose I'm to be livin' on this counterfeit you call love. Whilst you're off plyin' your sweet talk to some stinkin' Dutch whore over on the Wild Coast."

"The damned Hollander wenches are all too sottish by half. They'd swill a man's grog faster'n he can call for it." He took another pull from his tankard and glanced admiringly at Peg's bulging, half-laced bodice. "But I say deal the cards, m'lady. Where there's life, there's hope, as I'm a Christian."

"And what was it you were saying, love?" Joan turned back to Winston and poured another splash into his tankard. "I think it was something to do with the new slaves?"

"I said I don't like it, and I just might try doing something about it. I just hope there's no trouble here in the meantime." His voice slowly trailed off into the din of the rain.

This bother about the slaves was not a bit like him, Joan thought. Hugh'd never been out to right all the world's many ills. Besides, what did he expect? God's wounds, the planters were going to squeeze every shilling they could out of these new Africans. Everybody knew the Caribbees and all the Americas were "beyond the line," outside the demarcation on some map somewhere that separated Europe from the New World. Out here the rules were different. Hugh had always understood that better than anybody, so why was he so out of sorts now that the planters had found a replacement for their lazy indentures? Heaven can tell, he had wrongs enough of his own to brood about if he wanted to trouble his mind over life's little misfortunes.

"What is it really that's occupying your mind so much this trip, love? It can't just be these new slaves. I know you too well for that." She studied him. "Is't the sight bills?"

"I've been thinking about an idea I've had for a long, long time. Seeing what's happened now on Barbados, it all fits together somehow.''

"What're you talking about?"

"I'm wondering if maybe it's not time I tried changing a few things."

This was definitely a new Hugh. He never talked like that in the old days. Back then all he ever troubled about was how he was going to manage making a living--a problem he still hadn't worked out, if you want the honest truth.

She looked at him now, suddenly so changed, and recollected the first time she ever saw him. It was a full seven years past, just after she'd opened her tavern and while he was still a seaman on the Zeelander. That Dutch ship had arrived with clapboards and staves from Portsmouth, Rhode Island, needed on Barbados for houses and tobacco casks. While the Zeelander was lading Barbados cotton for the mills in New England, he'd come in one night with the other members of the Dutch crew, and she'd introduced him to one of the girls. But, later on, it was her he'd bought drinks for, not the plump Irish colleen he'd been with. And then came the questions. How'd she get on, he wanted to know, living by her wits out here in the New World? Where was the money?

She'd figured, rightly, that Hugh was looking for something, maybe thinking to try and make his own way, as she had.

After a while he'd finally ordered a tankard for the pouting girl, then disappeared. But there he was again the next evening, and the one after that too. Each time he'd go off with one of the girls, then come back and talk with her. Finally one night he did something unheard of. He bought a full flask of kill-devil and proposed they take a walk down to look at the ship.

God's life, as though she hadn't seen enough worn-out Dutch frigates....

Then she realized what was happening. This young English mate with a scar on his cheek desired her, was paying court to her. He even seemed to like her. Didn't he know she no longer entertained the trade herself?

But Hugh was different. So, like a fool, she lost sight of her better judgment. Later that night, she showed him how a woman differed from a girl.

And she still found occasion to remind him from time to time, seven years later....

"I want to show you how I came by the idea I've been working on." He abruptly rose and walked back to the bedroom. When he returned he was carrying his two pistols, their long steel barrels damascened with gold and the stocks fine walnut. He placed them carefully on the table, then dropped back into his chair and reached for his tankard. "Take a look at those."

"God's blood." She glanced at the guns and gave a tiny snort. "Every time I see you, you've got another pair."

"I like to keep up with the latest designs."

"So tell me what's 'latest' about these."

"A lot of things. In the first place, the firing mechanism's a flintlock. So when you pull the trigger, the piece of flint there in the hammer strikes against the steel wing on the cap of the powder pan, opening it and firing the powder in a single action. Also, the powder pan loads automatically when the barrel's primed. It's faster and better than a matchlock."

"That's lovely. But flintlocks have been around for some time, or hadn't you heard?" She looked at the guns and took a sip of sack, amused by his endless fascination with pistols. He'd always been that way, but it was to a purpose. You'd be hard pressed to find a marksman in the Caribbees better or faster than Hugh--a little talent left over from his time with the Cow-Killers on Tortuga, though for some reason he'd as soon not talk about those years. She glanced down again. "Is it just my eyes, or do I see two barrels? Now I grant you this is the first time I've come across anything like that. "

"Congratulations. That's what's new about this design. Watch." He lifted up a gun and carefully touched a second trigger, a smaller one in front of the first. The barrel assembly emitted a light click and revolved a half turn, bringing up the second barrel, ready to fire. "See, they're double- barreled. I hear it's called a 'turn-over' mechanism--since when you pull that second trigger, a spring-loaded assembly turns over a new barrel, complete with a primed powder pan." He gripped the muzzle and revolved the barrels back to their initial position. "This design's going to be the coming thing, mark it." He laid the pistol back onto the table. "Oh, by the way, there's one other curiosity. Have a look there on the breech. Can you make out the name?"

She lifted one of the flintlocks and squinted in the half-light. Just in front of the ornate hammer there was a name etched in gold: "Don Francisco de Castilla."

"That's more'n likely the gunsmith who made them. On a fine pistol you'll usually see the maker's name there. You ought to know that." She looked at him. "I didn't suppose you made them yourself, darlin'. I've never seen that name before, but God knows there're lots of Spanish pistols around the Caribbean. Everybody claims they're the best."

"That's what I thought the name was too. At first." He lifted his tankard and examined the amber contents. "Tell me. How much do you know about Jamaica?"

"What's that got to do with these pistols?"

"One thing at a time. I asked you what you know about Jamaica."

"No more'n everybody else does. It's a big island somewhere to the west of here, that the Spaniards hold. There's supposed to be a harbor and a fortress, and a little settlement they call Villa de la Vega, with maybe a couple of thousand planters. But that's about all, from what I hear, since the Spaniards've never yet found any gold or silver there." She studied him, puzzling. "Why're you asking?"

"I've been thinking. Maybe I'll go over and poke around a bit." He paused, then lowered his voice. "Maybe see if I can take the fortress."

" 'Maybe take the fortress,' you say?" She exploded with laughter and reached for the sack. "I reckon I'd best put away this flask. Right now."

"You don't think I can do it?"

"I hear the Spaniards've got heavy cannon in that fortress, and a big militia. Even some cavalry. No Englishman's going to take it." She looked at him. "Not wishing to offend, love, but wouldn't you say that's just a trifle out of your depth?"

"I appreciate your expression of confidence." He settled his tankard on the table. "Then tell me something else. Do you remember Jackson?"

"The famous 'Captain' Jackson, you mean?"

"Captain William Jackson."

"Sure, I recall that lying knave well enough." She snorted. "Who could forget him. He was here for two months once, while you were out, and turned Barbados upside down, recruiting men to sail against the Spaniards' settlements on the Main. Claiming he was financed by the Earl of Warwick. He sat drinking every night at this very table, then left me a stack of worthless sight drafts, saying he'd be back in no time to settle them in Spanish gold." She studied him for a moment. "That was four years past. The best I know he was never heard from since. For sure I never heard from him." Suddenly she leaned forward. "Don't tell me you know where he might be?"

"Not any more. But I learned last year what happened back then. It turns out he got nothing on the Main. The Spaniards would empty any settlement--Maracaibo, Puerto Cabello--he tried to take. They'd just strip their houses and disappear into the jungle."

"So he went back empty-handed?"

"Wrong. That's what he wanted everybody to think happened. Especially the Earl of Warwick. He kept on going." Winston lowered his voice again, beyond reach of the men across the room. "I wouldn't believe what he did next if I didn't have these pistols." He picked up one of the guns and yelled toward the whist table. "John."

"Aye." Mewes was on his feet in an instant, wiping his hand across his mouth.

"Remember where I got these flintlocks?"

"I seem to recall it was Virginia. Jamestown." He reached down and lifted his tankard for a sip. Then he wiped his mouth a second time. "An' if you want my thinkin', they was sold to you by the scurviest-lookin' whoreson that ever claim'd he was English, that I'd not trust with tuppence. An' that's the truth."

"Well..." She leaned back in her chair.

"Along with the pistols I also got part of the story of Jackson's expedition. It seems this man had been with them-- claimed he was first mate on the flagship--but he'd finally jumped ship when Jackson tried to storm a fortress up on the coast of Spanish Florida, then made his way north to Virginia. He stole these pistols from Jackson's cabin the night he swam ashore."

"Then I've half a mind to confiscate them here and now as payment for my sight drafts." She inspected the guns. "But I still don't follow what that's got to do with Jamaica."

He picked up one of the pistols again and traced his finger along the flintlock. "The name. Don Francisco de Castilla. I kept thinking and thinking, and finally I remembered. That's not a pistol maker. That's the name of the Spanish governor of Villa de la Vega. Jamaica. "

"But then how did Jackson get them? I never saw these pistols when he was here, and I'd have remembered them, you can be sure." She was staring skeptically at the guns.

"That's what I began to wonder. So I tracked down the seller and found out what really happened." He lowered his voice again. "Jackson got them from de Castilla's personal strongbox. In the fortress. William Jackson took Jamaica. He got the idea the Spaniards'd never be expecting an attack that far from the Main, and he was right. So after Maracaibo, he made way straight for Jamaica. He raised the bay at dawn, brought the fleet together and put in for the harbor. The fortress, the town, all of it, was his in a morning."

"But how could he hold the place? As soon as the Spaniards over on the Main got word, they'd be sure to send a..."

"He didn't bother. He delivered the town back in return for provisions and a ransom of twenty thousand pieces of eight. Split the money with his men and swore them to secrecy. But he kept these pistols." Winston smiled. "Except now they're mine."

"Hold a minute. I'm afraid I'm beginning to see what you're thinking." She leaned forward, alarm in her eyes. "So let me tell you a few things. About that little expedition of Jackson's. That fast-talking rogue put in here with three armed frigates. He raised over five hundred men and God knows how many muskets. I saw them all off, holding my valuable sight drafts, the day he set sail out of Carlisle Bay."

"But what if I got more men?"

"In God's name, who from?"

"Who do you think?" He ran his fingers through his hair and looked away. "I've been thinking it over for months. Well, now I've made up my mind. What the hell are the Americas for? Slavery?" He looked back. "I'm going to take Jamaica, and keep it. It'll be the one place in the New World where there'll be no indentures. No slaves. Just free men. The way it was on Tortuga."

"Christ on a cross, you've totally taken leave of sense!" She looked at him dumbfounded. "You'd best stop dreaming about Jamaica and put your deep mind to work on how you're going to collect those sight bills from the Council. You've got to make a living, love."

"The sight bills are part of my plan. As it happens, I expect to settle that very item next Friday night."

"Best of luck." She paused, then pushed back from the table. "God's blood, were you invited?"

He looked up from his tankard. "How do you know where I'm going?"

"There's only one place it could be. The fancy ball Master Briggs is holdin' for the Council. In his grand new estate house. It's the reason there's not a scrap of taffeta left in the whole of Bridgetown. I was trying to buy some all yesterday for the girls."

"I have to go. It's the perfect time to see them all together."

"And I suppose Miss Katherine Bedford'll be there as well?" Her voice had acquired an unmistakable edge. "In her official capacity as 'First Lady'?"

"Oddly enough, I neglected to enquire on that point."

"Did you now?" She sniffed. "Aye, her highness'll be in attendance, and probably wearin' half the taffeta I wanted to buy. Not that it'll be made up properly. She'll be there, the strumpet, on my honor...."

"What if she is? It's no matter to me." He drank again. "I just want my sight bills paid, in coin as agreed, not in bales of their damned worthless tobacco."

She seemed not to hear. "... when she's too busy ridin' that mare of hers to so much as nod her bonnet to an honest woman who might have need to make a living...."

"All right." He set down his tankard. "I'll take you."

"Pardon?"

"I said I'll take you."

"Now you've gone totally daft." She stared at him, secretly overjoyed he'd consider asking. "Can you fancy the scene? Me, in amongst all those dowdy Puritan sluts! Stuffing their fat faces whilst arguing over whether to starve their indentures completely to death. Not to mention there'd be general heart seizure in the ranks of the Council, the half of which keep open accounts here on the sly. Only I'm lucky to get paid in musty tobacco, let alone the coin you 're dreaming of." She laughed. "And I warrant you'll be paid with the same, love. That's assuming you're ever paid at all."

"As you will." He took a sip of sack. "But since you're so worried about the women, don't forget who else'll probably be there."

"Who do you mean?"

"Remember what the Portugals say: 'E a mulata que e Mulher'."

" 'It's the mulatto who's the real woman.' " She translated the famous Pernambuco expression, then frowned. "I suppose you mean that Portuguese mulatto Master Briggs bought for himself when you took them all down to Brazil. The one named Serina."

"The very one. I caught a glimpse of her again last night."

"I know her, you rogue. Probably better than you do. Briggs is always sending her down here for bottles of kill-devil, sayin' he doesn't trust his indentures to get them home. She's a fine-featured woman of the kind, if I say it myself."

"Finer than Briggs deserves."

"Did you know that amongst the Council she's known as his 'pumpkin-colored whore'? Those hypocritical Puritan whoremasters. I always ask her to stay a bit when she comes. I think she's probably lonely, poor creature. But I can tell you one thing for certain--she takes no great satisfaction in her new owner. Or in Barbados either, come to that, after the fine plantation she lived on in Brazil." She laughed. "Something not hard to understand. I'm always amazed to remember she's a slave. Probably one of the very first on this island." She looked away reflectively. "Though now she's got much company."

"Too much."

"You may be right for once. It's a new day, on my faith, and I don't mind telling you it troubles me a bit. There're apt to be thousands of these Africans here soon. There'll be nothing like it anywhere in the Americas." She sighed. "But the Council's all saying the slaves'll change everything, make them all rich." Her voice quickened as she turned back. "Do you suppose it's true?"

"Probably. That's why I plan to try and change a few things too." He looked out at the bay, where a line of brown pelicans glided single file across the tips of waves. The horizon beyond was lost in mist. "My own way."

Chapter Three

Katherine gazed past the pewter candlesticks and their flickering tapers, down the long cedar table of Briggs' dining hall, now piled high with stacks of greasy wooden plates spilling over with half-finished food. The room was wide and deep, with dark oak beams across the ceiling and fresh white plaster walls. Around the table were rows of grim men in black hats and plump Puritan women in tight bodices and starched collars. For all its surface festivity, there was something almost ominous about the evening. Change was in the air, and not change for the better.

At the head of the table were the most prominent members of the Council, the owners of Barbados' largest plantations. She knew the wealthiest ones personally: Edward Bayes, his jowls protruding beneath his whisp of beard, owned the choicest coastal lands north around Speightstown; Thomas Lancaster, now red-cheeked and glassy-eyed from the liquor, had the largest plantation in the rolling plains of St. George's parish, mid-island; Nicholas Whittington, dewlapped and portly, was master of a vast acreage in Christ's Church parish, on the southern coast.

Anthony Walrond had not been invited, nor any other of the new royalist emigres--which she should have known was exactly what was going to happen before she went to all the bother of having a new dress and bodice made up. No, tonight the guests were the rich planters, the old settlers who arrived on Barbados in the early years and claimed the best land. They were the ones that Dalby Bedford, now seated beside her, diplomatically sipping from his tankard, liked to call the "plantocracy." They had gathered to celebrate the beginnings of the sugar miracle. And the new order.

The room was alive with an air of expectancy, almost as palpable as the smoke that drifted in through the open kitchen door. Benjamin Briggs' banquet and ball, purportedly a celebration, was in truth something more like a declaration: the Assembly, that elected body created by Dalby Bedford from among the small freeholders, would soon count for nothing in the face of the big planters' new wealth and power. Henceforth, this flagship of the Americas would be controlled by the men who owned the most land and the most slaves.

The worst part of all, she told herself, was that Briggs' celebration would probably last till dawn. Though the banquet was over now, the ball was about to commence. And after that, Briggs had dramatically announced, there would be a special preview of his new sugarworks, the first on the island.

In hopes of reinforcing her spirits, she took another sip of Canary wine, then lifted her glass higher, to study the room through its wavy refractions. Now Briggs seemed a distorted, comical pygmy as he ordered the servants to pass more bottles of kill-devil down the table, where the planters and their wives continued to slosh it into their pewter tankards of lemon punch. After tonight, she found herself thinking, the whole history of the Americas might well have to be rewritten. Barbados would soon be England's richest colony, and unless the Assembly held firm, these few greedy Puritans would seize control. All thanks to sugar.

Right there in the middle of it all was Hugh Winston, looking a little melancholy and pensive. He scarcely seemed to notice as several toasts to his health went round the table--salutes to the man who'd made sugar possible. He obviously didn't care a damn about sugar. He was too worried about getting his money.

As well he should be, she smiled to herself. He'll never see it. Not a farthing. Anybody could tell that Briggs and the Council hadn't the slightest intention of settling his sight bills. He didn't impress them for a minute with those pretty Spanish pistols in his belt. They'd stood up to a lot better men than him. Besides, there probably weren't two thousand pounds in silver on the whole island.

Like all the American settlements, Barbados' economy existed on barter and paper; everything was valued in weights of tobacco or cotton. Metal money was almost never seen; in fact, it was actually against the law to export coin from England to the Americas. The whole Council together couldn't come up with that much silver. He could forget about settling his sight bills in specie.

"I tell you this is the very thing every man here'll need if he's to sleep nights." Briggs voice cut through her thoughts. He was at the head of the table, describing the security features of his new stone house. "Mind you, it's not yet finished." He gestured toward the large square staircase leading up toward the unpainted upper floors. "But it's already secure as the Tower of London."

She remembered Briggs had laid the first stone of his grand new plantation house in the weeks after his return from Brazil, in anticipation of the fortune he expected to make from sugar, and he had immediately christened it "Briggs Hall." The house and its surrounding stone wall were actually a small fortress. The dining room where they sat now was situated to one side of the wide entry foyer, across from the parlor and next to the smoky kitchen, a long stone room set off to the side. There were several small windows along the front and back of the house, but these could all be sealed tight with heavy shutters--a measure as much for health as safety, since the planters believed the cool night breeze could induce dangerous chills and "hot paroxysms."

Maybe he thought he needed such a house. Maybe, she told herself, he did. He already had twenty indentures, and he'd just bought thirty Africans. The island now expected more slave cargos almost weekly.

As she listened, she found herself watching Hugh Winston, wondering what the Council's favorite smuggler thought of it all. Well, at the moment he looked unhappy. He seemed to find Briggs' lecture on the new need for security either pathetic or amusing--his eyes were hard to make out--but she could tell from his glances round the table he found something ironic about the need for a stone fort in the middle of a Caribbean island.

Briggs suddenly interrupted his monologue and turned to signal his servants to begin placing trenchers of clay pipes and Virginia tobacco down the table. A murmur of approval went up when the planters saw it was imported, not the musty weed raised on Barbados.

The appearance of the tobacco signaled the official end of the food. As the gray-shirted servants began packing and firing the long-stemmed pipes, then kneeling to offer them to the tipsy planters, several of the more robust wives present rose with a grateful sigh. Holding their new gowns away from the ant-repellent tar smeared along the legs of the table and chairs, they began retiring one by one to the changing room next to the kitchen, where Briggs' Irish maidservants could help loosen their tight bodices in preparation for the ball.

Katherine watched the women file past, then cringed as she caught the first sound of tuning fiddles from the large room opposite the entryway. What was the rest of the evening going to be like? Surely the banquet alone was enough to prove Briggs was now the most powerful man in Barbados, soon perhaps in all the Americas. He had truly outdone himself. Even the servants were saying it was the grandest night the island had ever seen--and predicting it was only the first of many to come.

The indentures themselves had all dined earlier on their usual fare of loblolly cornmeal mush, sweet potatoes, and hyacinth beans--though tonight they were each given a small allowance of pickled turtle in honor of the banquet. But for the Council and their wives, Briggs had dressed an expensive imported beef as the centerpiece of the table. The rump had been boiled, and the brisket, along with the cheeks, roasted. The tongue and tripe had been minced and baked into pies, seasoned with sweet herbs, spices, and currants. The beef had been followed by a dish of Scots collops of pork; then a young kid goat dressed in its own blood and thyme, with a pudding in its belly; and next a sweet suckling pig in a sauce of brains, sage, and nutmeg mulled in Claret wine. After that had come a shoulder of mutton and a side of goat, both covered with a rasher of bacon, then finally baked rabbit and a loin of veal.

And as though that weren't enough to allow every planter there to gorge himself to insensibility, there were also deep bowls of potato pudding and dishes of baked plantains, prickly pear, and custard apples. At the end came the traditional cold meats, beginning with roast duck well larded, then Spanish bacon, pickled oysters, and fish roe. With it all was the usual kill-devil, as well as Canary wine, Sherry, and red sack from Madeira.

When the grease-stained table had been cleared and the pipes lighted, Briggs announced the after-dinner cordial. A wide bowl of French brandy appeared before him, and into it the servants cracked a dozen large hen eggs. Then a generous measure of sugar was poured in and the mixture vigorously stirred. Finally he called for a burning taper, took it himself, and touched the flame to the brandy. The fumes hovering over the dish billowed into a huge yellow blossom, and the table erupted with a cheer. After the flame had died away, the servants began ladling out the mixture and passing portions down the table.

Katherine sipped the sweet, harsh liquid and watched as two of the planters sitting nearby, their clay pipes billowing, rose unsteadily and hoisted their cups for a toast. The pair smelled strongly of sweat and liquor. They weren't members of the Council, but both would also be using the new sugar-works--for a percentage--after Briggs had finished with his own cane, since their plantations were near Briggs' and neither could afford the investment to build his own. One was Thomas Lockwood, a short, brooding Cornwall bachelor who now held a hundred acres immediately north of Briggs' land, and the other was William Marlott, a thin, nervous Suffolk merchant who had repaired to Barbados with his consumptive wife ten years before and had managed to accumulate eighty acres upland, all now planted in cane.

"To the future of sugar on Barbados," Lockwood began, his voice slurred from the kill-devil. Then Marlott joined in, "And a fine fortune to every man at this table."

A buzz of approval circled the room, and with a scrape of chairs all the other men pulled themselves to their feet and raised their cups.

Katherine was surprised to see Hugh Winston lean back in his chair, his own cup sitting untouched on the boards. He'd been drinking all evening, but now his eyes had acquired an absent gaze as he watched the hearty congratulations going around.

After the planters had drunk, Briggs turned to him with a querulous expression.

"Where's your thirst, Captain? Will you not drink to the beginnings of English prosperity in the Caribbees? Sure, it's been a long time coming."

"You'll be an even longer time paying the price." It was virtually the first time Winston had spoken all evening, and his voice was subdued. There was a pause, then he continued, his voice still quiet. "So far all sugar's brought you is slavery. And prisons for homes, when it was freedom that Englishmen came to the Americas for. Or so I've heard claimed."

"Now sir, every man's got a right to his own mind on a thing, I always say. But the Caribbees were settled for profit, first and foremost. Let's not lose sight of that." Briggs smiled indulgently and settled his cup onto the table. "For that matter, what's all this 'freedom' worth if you've not a farthing in your pocket? We've tried everything else, and it's got to be sugar. It's the real future of the Americas, depend on it. Which means we've got to work a batch of Africans, plain as that, and pay mind they don't get out of hand. We've tried it long enough to know these white indentures can't, or won't, endure the labor to make sugar. Try finding me a white man who'll cut cane all day in the fields. That's why every spoon of that sweet powder an English gentlewoman stirs into her china cup already comes from a black hand in chains. It's always been, it'll always be. For sure it'll be the Papist Spaniards and Portugals still holding the chains if not us."

Winston, beginning to look a bit the worse for drink, seemed not to hear. "Which means you're both on the end of a chain, one way or another."

"Well, sir, that's as it may be." Briggs settled back into his chair. "But you've only to look at the matter to understand there's nothing to compare with sugar. Ask any Papist. Now I've heard said it was first discovered in Cathay, but we all know sugar's been the monopoly of the Spaniards and Portugals for centuries. Till now. Mind you, the men in this room are the first Englishmen who've ever learned even how to plant the cane--not with seeds, but by burying sections of stalk."

Katherine braced herself for what would come next. She had heard it all so many times before, she almost knew his text by heart.

"We all know that if the Dutchmen hadn't taken that piece of Brazil from the Portugals, sugar'd be the secret of the Papists still. So this very night we're going to witness the beginning of a new history of the world. English sugar."

"Aye," Edward Bayes interrupted, pausing to wipe his beard against his sleeve. "We've finally found something we can grow here in the Caribbees that'll have a market worldwide. Show me the fine lord who doesn't have his cook lade sugar into every dish on his table. Or the cobbler, one foot in the almshouse, who doesn't use all the sugar he can buy or steal." Bayes beamed, his red-tinged eyes aglow in the candlelight. "And that's only today, sir. I tell you, only today. The market for sugar's just beginning."

"Not a doubt," Briggs continued. "Consider the new fashion just starting up in London for drinking coffee, and chocolate. There's a whole new market for sugar, since they'll not be drunk without it." He shoved aside his cup of punch and reached to pour a fresh splash of kill-devil into his tankard. "In faith, sugar's about to change forever the way Englishmen eat, and drink, and live."

"And I'll wager an acre of land here'll make a pound of sugar for every pound of tobacco it'll grow." Lockwood rose again. "When sugar'll bring who knows how many times the price. If we grow enough cane on Barbados, and buy ourselves enough of these Africans to bring it in, we'll be underselling the Papists in five years' time, maybe less."

"Aye." Briggs seconded Lockwood, eyeing him as he drank. It was common knowledge that Briggs held eighteen-month sight drafts from the planter, coming due in a fortnight. Katherine looked at the two of them and wondered how long it would be before the better part of Lockwood's acres were incorporated into the domain of Briggs Hall.

"Well, I kept my end of our bargain, for better or worse." Winston's voice lifted over the din of the table. "Now it's time for yours. Two thousand pounds were what we agreed on, in coin. Spanish pieces-of-eight, English sovereigns--there's little difference to me."

It's come, Katherine thought. But he'll not raise a shilling.

Briggs was suddenly scrutinizing his tankard as an uneasy quiet settled around the table. "It's a hard time for us all just now, sir." He looked up. "Six months more and we'll have sugar to sell to the Dutchmen. But as it is today..."

"That's something you should've thought about when you signed those sight drafts."

"I'd be the first one to grant you that point, sir, the very first." Briggs' face had assumed an air of contrition. "But what's done's done." He placed his rough hands flat down on the table, as though to symbolize they were empty. "We've talked it over, and the best we can manage now's to roll them over, with interest, naturally. What would you say to... five percent?"

"That wasn't the understanding." Winston's voice was quiet, but his eyes narrowed.

"Well, sir. That's the terms we're prepared to offer." Briggs' tone hardened noticeably. "In this world it's the wise man who takes what he can get."

"The sight bills are for cash on demand." Winston's voice was still faint, scarcely above a whisper. Katherine listened in dismay, realizing she'd secretly been hoping he could stand up to the Council. Just to prove somebody could. And now...

"Damn your sight bills, sir. We've made you our offer." Briggs exchanged glances with the other members of the Council. "In truth, it'd be in the interest of all of us here to just have them declared worthless paper."

"You can't rightfully do that." Winston drank again. "They have full legal standing."

"We have courts here, sir, that could be made to take the longer view. To look to the interests of the island."

"There're still courts in England. If we have to take it that far."

"But you'll not be going back there, sir. We both know it'd take years." Briggs grinned. "And I'll warrant you'd get more justice in England than you bargained for, if you had the brass to try it."

"That remains to be seen." Winston appeared trying to keep his voice firm. "But there'll be no need for that. I seem to recall the terms give me recourse--the right to foreclose. Without notice."

"Foreclose?" Briggs seemed unsure he had caught the word.

"Since you co-signed all the notes yourself, I won't have to bother with the rest of the Council," Winston continued. "I can just foreclose on you personally. Remember you pledged this plantation as collateral."

"That was a formality. And it was two years past." Briggs laughed. "Before I built this house. And the sugarworks. At the time there was nothing on this property but a thatched-roof bungalow.''

"Formality or not, the drafts pledge these acres and what's on them."

"Well, damn you, sir." Briggs slammed down his tankard. "You'll not get..."

"Mind you, I don't have any use for the land," Winston interjected. "So why don't we just make it the sugarworks? That ought to about cover what's owed." He looked back. "If I present the notes in Bridgetown tomorrow morning, we can probably just transfer ownership then and there. What do you say to that arrangement?"

"You've carried this jest quite far enough, sir." Briggs' face had turned the color of the red prickly-pear apples on the table. "We all need that sugarworks. You'll not be getting your hands on it. I presume I speak for all the Council when I say we'll protect our interests. If you try foreclosing on that sugarworks, I'll call you out. I've a mind to anyway, here and now. For your damned impudence." He abruptly pushed back from the table, his doublet falling open to reveal the handle of a pistol. Several Council members shoved back also. All had flintlock pistols in their belts, the usual precaution in an island of unruly indentures.

Winston appeared not to notice. "I see no reason for anyone to get killed over a little business transaction."

Briggs laughed again. "No sir, I suppose you'd rather just try intimidating us with threats of foreclosure. But by God, if you think you can just barge in here and fleece the Council of Barbados, you've miscalculated. It's time you learned a thing or two about this island," he continued, his voice rising. "Just because you like to strut about with a pair of fancy flintlocks in your belt, don't think we'll all heel to your bluff." He removed his dark hat and threw it on the table. It matched the black velvet of his doublet. "You can take our offer, or you can get off my property, here and now.''

Katherine caught the determined looks in the faces of several members of the Council as their hands dropped to their belts. She suddenly wondered if it had all been planned. Was this what they'd been waiting for? They must have known he'd not accept their offer, and figured there was a cheaper way to manage the whole business anyway. A standoff with pistols, Winston against them all.

"I still think it'd be better to settle this honorably." Winston looked down and his voice trailed off, but there was a quick flash of anger in his bloodshot eyes. Slowly he picked up his tankard and drained it. As the room grew silent, he coughed at the harshness of the liquor, then began to toy with the lid, flipping the thumb mechanism attached to the hinged top and watching it flap open and shut. He heaved a sigh, then abruptly leaned back and lobbed it in the general direction of the staircase.

As the tankard began its trajectory, he was on his feet, kicking away his chair. There was the sound of a pistol hammer being cocked and the hiss of a powder pan. Then the room flashed with an explosion from his left hand, where a pistol had appeared from out of his belt. At that moment the lid of the tankard seemed to disconnect in midair, spinning sideways as it ricocheted off the post of carved mastic wood at the top of the stairs. The pistol clicked, rotating up the under-barrel, and the second muzzle spoke. This time the tankard emitted a sharp ring and tumbled end over end till it slammed against the railing. Finally it bounced to rest against the cedar wainscot of the hallway, a small, centered hole directly through the bottom. The shorn lid was still rolling plaintively along the last step of the stairs.

The entire scene had taken scarcely more than a second. Katherine looked back to see him still standing; he had dropped the flintlock onto the table, both muzzles trailing wisps of gray smoke, while his right hand gripped the stock of the other pistol, still in his belt.

"You can deduct that from what's owed." His eyes went down the table.

Briggs sat motionless in his chair staring at the tankard, while the other planters all watched him in expectant silence. Finally he picked up his hat and settled it back on his head without a word. Slowly, one by one, the other men closed their doublets over their pistols and nervously reached for their tankards.

After a moment Winston carefully reached for his chair and straightened it up. He did not sit. "You'll be welcome to buy back the sugarworks any time you like. Just collect the money and settle my sight bills."

The room was still caught in silence, till finally Briggs found his voice.

"But the coin's not to be had, sir. Try and be reasonable. I tell you we'd not find it on the whole of the island."

"Then maybe I'll just take something else." He reached out and seized the motley gray shirt of Timothy Farrell, now tiptoeing around the table carrying a fresh flask of kill-devil to Briggs. The terrified Irishman dropped the bottle with a crash as Winston yanked him next to the table. "Men. And provisions."

Briggs looked momentarily disoriented. "I don't follow you, sir. What would you be doing with them?"

"That's my affair. Just give me two hundred indentures, owned by the men on the Council who signed the sight drafts." He paused. "That should cover about half the sum. I'll take the balance in provisions. Then you can all have your sight bills to burn."

Now Briggs was studying the tankard in front of him, his eyes shining in the candlelight. "Two hundred indentures and you'd be willing to call it settled?"

"To the penny."

In the silence that followed, the rasp of a fiddle sounded through the doorway, followed by the shrill whine of a recorder. Briggs yelled for quiet, then turned back.

"There may be some merit in what you're proposing." He glanced up at Farrell, watching the indenture flee the room as Winston released his greasy shirt. "Yes sir, I'm thinking your proposal has some small measure of merit. I don't know about the other men here, but I can already name you a number of these layabouts I could spare." He turned to the planters next to him, and several nodded agreement. "Aye, I'd have us talk more on it." He pushed back his chair and rose unsteadily from the table. The other planters took this as a signal, and as one man they scraped back their chairs and began to nervously edge toward the women, now clustered under the arches leading into the dancing room. "When the time's more suitable."

"Tomorrow, then."

"Give us till tomorrow night, sir. After we've had some time to parlay." Briggs nodded, then turned and led the crowd toward the sound of the fiddles, relief in his eyes.

Katherine sat unmoving, dreading the prospect of having to dance with any of the drunken planters. She watched through the dim candlelight as Winston reached for an open flask of kill-devil, took a triumphant swig, then slammed it down. She suddenly realized the table had been entirely vacated save for the two of them.

The audacity! Of course it had all been a bluff. Anyone should have been able to tell. He'd just wanted the indentures all along. But why?

"I suppose congratulations are in order, Captain."

"Pardon?" He looked up, not recognizing her through the smoke and flickering shadows. "Forgive me, madam, I didn't catch what you said."

"Congratulations. That was a fine show you put on with your pistol."

He seemed momentarily startled, but then he laughed at his own surprise and took another swig of kill-devil. "Thank you very much." He wiped his mouth, set down the bottle, and glanced back. "Forgive me if I disturbed your evening."

"Where did you learn to shoot like that?"

"I used to do a bit of hunting."

"Have you ever actually shot a man?"

"Not that I choose to remember."

"I thought so. It really was a bluff." Her eyebrows lifted. "So may I enquire what is it you propose doing now with your two hundred men and provisions?"

"You're Miss Bedford, if I'm not mistaken." He rose, finally making her out. "I don't seem to recall our being introduced." He bowed with a flourish. "Hugh Winston, your most obedient servant." Then he reached for the flask of kill-devil as he lowered back into his chair. "I'd never presume to address a... lady unless we're properly acquainted."

She found the hint of sarcasm in his tone deliberately provoking. She watched as he took another drink directly from the bottle.

"I don't seem to recall ever seeing you speak with a lady, Captain."

"You've got a point." His eyes twinkled. "Perhaps it's because there're so few out here in the Caribbees."

"Or could it be you're not aware of the difference?" His insolent parody of politeness had goaded her into a tone not entirely to her own liking.

"So I've sometimes been told." Again his voice betrayed his pleasure. "But then I doubt there is much, really." He grinned. "At least, by the time they get around to educating me on that topic."

As happened only rarely, she couldn't think of a sufficiently cutting riposte. She was still searching for one when he continued, all the while examining her in the same obvious way he'd done on the shore. "Excuse me, but I believe you enquired about something. The men and provisions, I believe it was. The plain answer is I plan to take them and leave Barbados, as soon as I can manage."

"And where is it you expect you'll be going?" She found her footing again, and this time she planned to keep it.

"Let's say, on a little adventure. To see a new part of the world." He was staring at her through the candlelight. "I've had about enough of this island of yours. Miss Bedford. As well as the new idea that slavery's going to make everybody rich. I'm afraid it's not my style."

"But I gather you're the man responsible for our noble new order here, Captain."

He looked down at the flask, his smile vanishing. "If that's true, I'm not especially proud of the fact."

At last she had him. All his arrogance had dissolved. Just like Jeremy, that time she asked him to tell her what exactly he'd done in the battle at Marsten Moor. Yet for some reason she pulled back, still studying him.

"It's hard to understand you, Captain. You help them steal sugarcane from the Portugals, then you decide you don't like it."

"At the time it was a job. Miss Bedford. Let's say I've changed my mind since then. Things didn't turn out exactly the way I'd figured they would." He took another drink, then set down the bottle and laughed. "That always seems to be the way."

"What do you mean?"

"It's something like the story of my life." His tone waxed slightly philosophical as he stared at the flickering candle. "I always end up being kicked about by events. So now I've decided to try turning things around. Do a little kicking of my own."

"That's a curious ambition. I suppose these indentures are going to help you do it?" She was beginning to find him more interesting than she'd expected. "You said just now you learned to shoot by hunting. I know a lot of men who hunt, but I've never seen anything like what you did tonight. Where exactly did you learn that?"

He paused, wondering how much to say. The place, of course, was Tortuga, and these days that meant the Cow-Killers, men who terrified the settlers of the Caribbean. But this wasn't a woman he cared to frighten. He was beginning to like her brass, the way she met his eye. Maybe, he thought, he'd explain it all to her if he got a chance someday. But not tonight. The story was too long, too painful, and ended too badly.

His memories of Tortuga went back to the sultry autumn of 1631. Just a year before, that little island had been taken over by a group of English planters--men and women who'd earlier tried growing tobacco up on St. Christopher, only to run afoul of its Carib Indians and their poisoned arrows. After looking around for another island, they'd decided on Tortuga, where nobody lived then except for a few hunters of wild cattle, the Cow-Killers. Since the hunters themselves spent a goodly bit of their time across the channel on the big Spanish island of Hispaniola, Tortuga was all but empty.

But now these planters were living just off the northern coast of a major Spanish domain, potentially much more dangerous than merely having a few Indians about. So they petitioned the newly formed Providence Company in London to swap a shipment of cannon for a tobacco contract. The Company, recently set up by some Puritan would-be privateers, happily agreed.

Enter Hugh Winston. He'd just been apprenticed for three months to the Company by his royalist parents, intended as a temporary disciplining for some unpleasant reflections he'd voiced on the character of King Charles that summer after coming home from his first term at Oxford. Lord Winston and his wife Lady Brett, knowing he despised the Puritans for their hypocrisy, assumed this would be the ideal means to instill some royalist sympathies. As it happened, two weeks later the Providence Company posted this unwelcome son of two prominent monarchists out to Tortuga on the frigate delivering their shipment of guns.

No surprise, Governor Hilton of the island's Puritan settlement soon had little use for him either. After he turned out to show no more reverence for Puritans than for the monarchy, he was sent over to hunt on Hispaniola with the Cow- Killers. That's where he had to learn to shoot if he was to survive. As things turned out, being banished there probably saved his life.

When the Spaniards got word of this new colony, with Englishmen pouring in from London and Bristol, the Audiencia of Santo Domingo, the large Spanish city on Hispaniola's southern side, decided to make an example. So in January of 1635 they put together an assault force of some two hundred fifty infantry, sailed into Tortuga's harbor, and staged a surprise attack. As they boasted afterward, they straightaway put to the sword all those they first captured, then hanged any others who straggled in later. By the time they'd finished, they'd burned the settlement to the ground and killed over six hundred men, women and children. They also hanged a few of the Cow-Killers--a mistake that soon changed history.

When Jacques le Basque, the bearded leader of Hispanio- la's hunters, found out what had happened to his men, he vowed he was going to bankrupt and destroy Spain's New World empire in revenge. From what was heard these days, he seemed well on his way to succeeding.

Hugh Winston had been there, a founding member of that band of men now known as the most vicious marauders the world had ever seen. That was the piece of his life he'd never gotten around to telling anyone....

"I did some hunting when I was apprenticed to an English settlement here in the Caribbean. Years ago."

"Well, I must say you shoot remarkably well for a tobacco planter, Captain." She knew he was avoiding her question. Why?

"I thought I'd just explained. I also hunted some in those days." He took another drink, then sought to shift the topic. "Perhaps now I can be permitted to ask you a question, Miss Bedford. I'd be interested to know what you think of the turn things are taking here? That is, in your official capacity as First Lady of this grand settlement."

"What exactly do you mean?" God damn his supercilious tone.

"The changes ahead. Here on Barbados." He waved his hand. "Will everybody grow rich, the way they're claiming?"

"Some of the landowners are apt to make a great deal of money, if sugar prices hold." Why, she wondered, did he want to know? Was he planning to try and settle down? Or get into the slave trade himself? In truth, that seemed more in keeping with what he did for a living now.

"Some? And why only some?" He examined her, puzzling. "Every planter must already own a piece of this suddenly valuable land."

"The Council members and the other big landowners are doubtless thinking to try and force out the smaller freeholders, who'll not have a sugarworks and therefore be at their mercy." She began to toy deliberately with her glass, uncomfortable at the prospect she was describing. "It's really quite simple, Captain. I'm sure you can grasp the basic principles of commerce... given your line of work."

"No little fortunes? just a few big ones?" Oddly, he refused to be baited.

"You've got it precisely. But what does that matter to you? You don't seem to care all that much what happens to our small freeholders."

"If that's true, it's a sentiment I probably share with most of the people who were at this table tonight." He raised the empty flask of kill-devil and studied it thoughtfully against the candle. "So if Briggs and the rest are looking to try and take it all, then I'd say you're in for a spell of stormy weather here, Miss Bedford."

"Well, their plans are far from being realized, that I promise you. Our Assembly will stand up to them all the way."

"Then I suppose I should wish you, and your father, and your Assembly luck. You're going to need it." He flung the empty flask crashing into the fireplace, rose, and moved down the table. The light seemed to catch in his scar as he passed the candle. "And now perhaps you'll favor me with the next dance."

She looked up, startled, as he reached for her hand.

"Captain, I think you ought to know that I'm planning to be married."

"To one of these rich planters, I presume."

"To a gentleman, if you know what that is. And a man who would not take it kindly if he knew I was seen with you here tonight."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Anthony Walrond."

Winston erupted with laughter. "Well, good for him. He also has superb taste in flintlock muskets. Please tell him that when next you see him."

"You mean the ones you stole from his ship that went aground? I don't expect he would find that comment very amusing."

"Wouldn't he now." Winston's eyes flashed. "Well, damned to him. And if you want to hear something even less amusing than that, ask him sometime to tell you why I took those muskets." He reached for her hand. "At any rate, I'd like to dance with his lovely fiancee."

"I've already told you..."

"But it's so seldom a man like me is privileged to meet a true lady." His smile suddenly turned gracious. "As you were thoughtful enough to point out only a few moments ago. Why not humor me? I don't suppose you're his property. You seem a trifle too independent for that."

Anthony would doubtless be infuriated, but she found herself smiling back. Anyway, how would he ever find out? None of these Puritans even spoke to him. Besides, what else was there to do? Sit and stare at the greasy tankards on the table?... But what exactly had Hugh Winston meant about Anthony's muskets?

"Very well. Just one."

"I'm flattered." He was sweeping her through the archway, into the next room.

The fiddles were just starting a new tune, while the planters and their wives lined up facing each other, beginning the country dance Flaunting Two. As couples began to step forward one by one, then whirl down the room in turns to the music, Katherine found herself joining the end of the women's line. Moments later Winston bowed to her, heels together, then spun her down the makeshift corridor between the lines. He turned her away from him, then back, elegantly, in perfect time with the fiddle bows.

The dance seemed to go on forever, as bodies smelling of sweat and kill-devil jostled together in the confinement of the tiny room. Yet it was invigorating, purging all her misgivings over the struggle that lay ahead. When she moved her body to her will like this, she felt in control of everything. As if she were riding, the wind hard against her cheek. Then, as now, she could forget about Anthony, the Council, about everything. Why couldn't all of life be managed the same way?

When the dance finally concluded, the fiddlers scarcely paused before striking up another.

"Just one more?" He was bending over, saying something.

"What?" She looked up at him, not hearing his words above the music and noise and bustle of the crowd. Whatever it was he'd said, it couldn't be all that important. She reached for his hand and guided him into the next dance.

A loud clanging resounded through the room, causing the fiddles to abruptly halt and startling Katherine, who found herself alarmed less by the sound than by the deadening return of reality. She looked around to see Benjamin Briggs standing in the center of the floor, slamming a large bell with a mallet.

"Attention gentlemen and ladies, if you please." He was shouting, even though the room had gone silent. "All's ready. The sugarworks start-up is now. "

There was general applause around the room. He waited till it died away, then continued, in a more moderate tone.

"I presume the ladies will prefer to retire above stairs rather than chance the night air. There's feather beds and hammocks ready, and the servants'll bring the candles and chamber pots."

Winston listened in mock attentiveness, then leaned over toward Katherine.

"Then I must bid you farewell, Miss Bedford. And lose you to more worthy companions."

She looked at him dumbly, her blood still pumping from the dance. The exhilaration and release were the very thing she'd been needing.

"I have no intention of missing the grand start-up." She tried to catch her breath. "It's to be history in the making, don't you recall?"

"That it truly will be." He shrugged. "But are you sure the sugar-works is any place for a woman?"

"As much as a man." She glared back at him. "There's a woman there already, Captain. Briggs' mulatto. I heard him say she's in the boiling house tonight, showing one of the new Africans how to heat the sap. She supposedly ran one once in Brazil."

"Maybe she just told him that to avoid the dance." He turned and watched the planters begin filing out through the wide rear door. "Shall we join them, then?"

As they walked out into the courtyard, the cool night air felt delicious against her face and sweltering bodice. At the back of the compound Briggs was opening a heavy wooden gate in the middle of the ten-foot-high stone wall that circled his house.

"These Africans'll make all the difference, on my faith. It's already plain as can be." He cast a withering glance at Katherine as she and Winston passed, then he followed them through, ordering the servants to secure the gate. The planters were assembled in a huddle now, surrounded by several of Briggs' indentures holding candle-lanterns. He took up his place at the front of the crowd and began leading them down the muddy road toward the torch-lit sugarworks lying to the left of the plantation house.

Along the road were the thatched cabins of the indentured servants, and beyond these was a cluster of half-finished reed and clay huts, scarcely head high, that the Africans had begun constructing for themselves.

"They're sound workers, for all their peculiar ways." Briggs paused and pointed to a large drum resting in front of one of the larger huts. It was shaped like an hourglass, and separate goatskins had been stretched over each mouth and laced together, end to end. "What do you make of that contrivance? The first thing they did was start making this drum. And all this morning, before sunup, they were pounding on it. Damnedest racket this side of hell."

"Aye, mine did the very same," Lancaster volunteered. "I heard them drumming all over the island."

Briggs walked on. "They gathered 'round that Yoruba called Atiba, who's shaking some little seashells on a tray and chanting some of their gabble. After a time he'd say something to one of them and then there'd be more drumming." He shook his head in amazement. "Idolatry worse'n the Papists."

"I've a mind to put a stop to it," Whittington interjected. "The indentures are already complaining."

"It's a bother, I grant you. But I see no harm in their customs, long as they put in a day's work. The place I drew the line was when they started trying to bathe in my pond every night, when any Christian knows baths are a threat to health. But for it all, one of them will cut more cane than three Irishmen." He cast a contemptuous glance backward at Timothy Farrell, who was following at a distance, holding several bottles of kill-devil. "From sunup to sundown. Good workers, to the man. So if they choose to beat on drums, I say let them. It's nothing from my pocket."

Katherine watched Winston shake his head in dismay as he paused to pick up the drum, turning it in his hands.

"You seem troubled about their drumming, Captain. Why's that?"

He looked up at her, almost as though he hadn't heard. "You've never been to Brazil, have you, Miss Bedford?"

"I have not."

"Then you probably wouldn't believe me, even if I told you." He looked back at the huts and seemed to be talking to himself. "God damn these Englishmen. They're fools."

"It's surely some kind of their African music."

"Obviously." His voice had a sarcastic cut, which she didn't particularly like. But before she could reply to him in kind, he had set down the drum and moved on, seeming to have forgotten all about whatever it was that had so distressed him the moment before. Then he turned back to her. "May I enquire if you yourself play an instrument, Miss Bedford?"

"I once played the spinet." She reached down and picked up a small land crab wandering across their path. She examined it, then flung it aside, its claws flailing. "But I don't bother anymore."

He watched the crab bemusedly, then turned back. "Then you do know something about music?"

"We're not without some rudiments of education here on Barbados, Captain."

"And languages? Have you ever listened to these Yoruba talk? Theirs is a language of tones, you know. Same as their drums."

"Some of these new Africans have a curious-sounding speech, I grant you."

He stared at her a moment, as though preoccupied. "God help us all."

He might have said more, but then he glanced after the crowd, now moving down the road. Ahead of them a gang of blacks could be seen through the torchlight, carrying bundles of cane in from the field and stacking them in piles near the new mill, situated atop a slight rise. A group of white indentured workers was also moving cane toward the mill from somewhere beyond the range of the torchlight, whipping forward a team of oxen pulling a large two-wheeled cart stacked with bundles. She noticed Winston seemed in no great hurry, and instead appeared to be listening absently to the planters.

"Would you believe this is the very same cane we brought from Brazil?" Briggs was pointing toward a half-cut field adjacent to the road. "I planted October a year ago, just before the autumn rains. It's been sixteen months almost to the day, just like the Dutchmen said." He turned back to the crowd of planters. "The indentures weeded and dunged it, but I figured the Africans would be best for cutting it, and I was right. Born field workers. They'll be a godsend if they can be trained to run the sugarworks." He lowered his voice. "This is the last we'll need of these idling white indentures."

They were now approaching the mill, which was situated inside a new thatched-roof building. Intended for crushing the cane and extracting the juice, it would be powered by two large white oxen shipped down specially from Rhode Island.

The mill was a mechanism of three vertical brass rollers, each approximately a foot in diameter, that were cogged together with teeth around their top and bottom. A large round beam was secured through the middle of the central roller and attached to two long sweeps that extended outward to a circular pathway intended for the draft animals. When the sweeps were moved, the beam would rotate and with it the rollers.

"We just finished installing the rollers tonight. There was no chance to test it. But I explained the operation to the indentures. We'll see if they can remember."

An ox had been harnessed to each of the two sweeps; as Briggs approached he signaled the servants to whip them forward. The men nodded and lashed out at the animals, who snorted, tossed their heads, then began to trudge in a circular path around the mill. Immediately the central roller began to turn, rotating the outer rollers against it by way of its cogs. As the rollers groaned into movement, several of the indentures backed away and studied them nervously.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Briggs yelled at the two men standing nearest the mill, holding the first bundles of cane. "Go ahead and try feeding it through."

One of the men moved gingerly toward the grinding rollers and reached out, at arm's length, to feed a small bundle consisting of a half dozen stalks of cane into the side rotating away from him. There was a loud crackle as the bundle began to gradually disappear between the rollers. As the crushed cane stalks emerged on the rear side of the mill, a second indenture seized the flattened bundle and fed it back through the pair of rollers turning in the opposite direction. In moments a trickle of pale sap began sliding down the sides of the rollers and dripping into a narrow trough that led through the wall and down the incline toward the boiling house.

Briggs walked over to the trough and examined the running sap in silence. Then he dipped in a finger and took it to his lips. He savored it for a moment, looked up, triumph in his eyes, and motioned the other men forward.

"Have a taste. It's the sweetest nectar there could ever be." As the planters gathered around the trough sampling the first cane juice, indentures continued feeding a steady progression of cane bundles between the rollers. While the planters stood watching, the trough began to flow.

"It works, by Christ." Marlott emitted a whoop and dipped in for a second taste. "The first English sugar mill in all the world."

"We've just witnessed that grand historic moment, Miss Bedford." Winston turned back to her, his voice sardonic. "In a little more time, these wonderful sugarmills will probably cover Barbados. Together with the slaves needed to cut the cane for them. I'd wager that in a few years' time there'll be more Africans here than English. What we've just witnessed is not the beginning of the great English Caribbees, but the first step toward what'll one day be the great African Caribbees. I suggest we take time to savor it well."

His voice was drowned in the cheer rising up from the cluster of planters around Briggs. They had moved on down the incline now and were standing next to the boiling house, watching as the sap began to collect in a tank. Briggs scrutinized the tank a moment longer, then turned to the group. "This is where the sap's tempered with wet ashes just before it's boiled. That's how the Portugals do it. From here it runs through that trough,"--he indicated a second flow, now starting--"directly into the first kettle in the boiling house." He paused and gestured Farrell to bring the flasks forward. "I propose we take time to fortify ourselves against the heat before going in."

"Shall we proceed?" Winston was pointing down the hill. Then he laughed. "Or would you like some liquor first?"

"Please." She pushed past him and headed down the incline. They reached the door of the boiling house well before the planters, who were lingering at the tank, passing the flask. Winston ducked his head at the doorway and they passed through a wide archway and into a thatched-roof enclosure containing a long, waist-high furnace of Dutch brick. In the back, visible only from the light of the open furnace door, were two figures: Briggs' new Yoruba slave Atiba and his Portuguese mistress, Serina.

Katherine, who had almost forgotten how beautiful the mulatto was, found herself slightly relieved that Serina was dressed in perfect modesty. She wore a full-length white shift, against which her flawless olive skin fairly glowed in the torchlight. As they entered, she was speaking animatedly with Atiba while bending over to demonstrate how to feed dry cane tops into the small openings along the side of the furnace. When she spotted them, however, she pulled suddenly erect and fell silent, halting in mid-sentence.

The heat in the room momentarily took away Katherine's breath, causing her to stand in startled disorientation. It was only then that she realized Hugh Winston was pulling at her sleeve. Something in the scene apparently had taken him completely by surprise.

Then she realized what it was. Serina had been speaking to the tall, loincloth-clad Yoruba in an alien language that sounded almost like a blend of musical tones and stops.

Now the planters began barging through the opening, congratulating Briggs as they clustered around the string of copper cauldrons cemented into the top of the long furnace. Then, as the crowd watched expectantly, a trickle of cane sap flowed down from the holding tank and spattered into the first red-hot cauldron.

The men erupted with a cheer and whipped their hats into the air. Again the brown flask of kill-devil was passed appreciatively. After taking a long swallow, Briggs turned to Serina, gesturing toward Atiba as he addressed her in pidgin Portuguese, intended to add an international flavor to the evening.

"Ele compreendo? ''

"Sim. Compreendo. " She nodded, reached for a ladle, and began to skim the first gathering of froth off the top of the boiling liquid. Then she dumped the foam into a clay pot beside the furnace.

"She's supposed to know how fast to feed the furnaces to keep the temperature right. And when to ladle the liquor into the next cauldron down the row." He stepped back from the furnace, fanning himself with his hat, and turned to the men. "According to the way the Portugals do it in Brazil, the clarified liquor from the last cauldron in the line here is moved to a cistern to cool for a time, then it's filled into wooden pots and moved to the curing house."

"Is that ready too?" A husky voice came from somewhere in the crowd.

"Aye, and I've already had enough pots made to get started. We let the molasses drain out and the sugar cure for three or four months, then we move the pots to the knocking house, where we turn them over and tap out a block of sugar. The top and bottom are brown sugar, what the Portugals call muscavado, and the center is pure white." He reached again for the bottle and took a deep swallow. "Twenty pence a pound in London, when our tobacco used to clear three farthings."

"To be sure, the mill and the boiling house are the key. We'll have to start building these all over the island." Thomas Lancaster removed his black hat to wipe his brow, then pulled it firmly back on his head. "And start training the Africans in their operation. No white man could stand this heat."

"She should have this one trained in a day or so." Briggs thumbed toward Atiba, now standing opposite the door examining the planters. "Then we can have him train more."

"I'll venture you'd do well to watch that one particularly close." Edward Bayes lowered his voice, speaking into his beard. "There's a look about him."

"Aye, he's cantankerous, I'll grant you, but he's quick. He just needs to be tamed. I've already had to flog him once, ten lashes, the first night here, when he balked at eating loblolly mush."

"Ten, you say?" Dalby Bedford did not bother to disguise the astonishment in his voice. "Would you not have done better to start with five?"

"Are you lecturing me now on how to best break in my Africans?" Briggs glared. "I paid for them, sir. They're my property, to manage as I best see fit."

Nicholas Whittington murmured his assent, and others concurred.

"As you say, gentlemen. But you've got three more Dutch slavers due within a fortnight. I understand they're supposed to be shipping Barbados a full three thousand this year alone." Bedford looked about the room with a concerned expression. "That'll be just a start, if sugar production expands the way it seems it will. It might be well if we had the Assembly pass Acts for ordering and governing these slaves."

"Damn your Assembly. We already have laws for property on Barbados."

Again the other planters voiced their agreement. Bedford stood listening, then lifted his hand for quiet. Katherine found herself wishing he would be as blunt with them as Winston had been. Sometimes the governor's good manners got in the way, something that hardly seemed to trouble Hugh Winston.

"I tell you this is no light matter. No man in this room knows how to manage all these Africans. What Englishman has ever been responsible for twenty, thirty, nay perhaps even a hundred slaves? They've to be clothed in some manner, fed, paired for offspring. And religion, sir? Some of the Quakers we've let settle in Bridgetown are already starting to say your blacks should be baptized and taught Christianity."

"You can't be suggesting it? If we let them be made Christians, where would it end?" Briggs examined him in disbelief. "You'd have laws, sir, Acts of your Assembly. Well there's the place to start. I hold the first law should be to fine and set in the stocks any of these so-called Quakers caught trying to teach our blacks Christianity. We'll not stand for it."

Katherine saw Serina's features tense and her eyes harden, but she said nothing, merely continued to skim the foam from the boiling surface of the cauldron.

"The Spaniards and Portugals teach the Catholic faith to their Negroes," Bedford continued evenly.

"And there you have the difference. They're not English. They're Papists." Briggs paused as he studied the flow of cane sap entering the cauldron from the holding tank, still dripping slowly from the lead spout. "By the looks of it, it could be flowing faster." He studied it a moment longer, then turned toward the door. "The mill. Maybe that's the answer. What if we doubled the size of the cane bundles?"

Katherine watched the planters trail after Briggs, out the doorway and into the night, still passing the flask of kill-devil.

"What do you think, Captain? Should an African be made a Christian?"

"Theology's not my specialty, Miss Bedford." He walked past her. "Tell me first if you think a Puritan's one." He was moving toward Serina, who stood silently skimming the top of the first cauldron, now a vigorous boil. She glanced up once and examined him, then returned her eyes to the froth. Katherine just managed to catch a few words as he began speaking to her quietly in fluent Portuguese, as though to guard against any of the planters accidentally overhearing.

"Senhora, how is it you know the language of the Africans?"

She looked up for a moment without speaking, her eyes disdainful. "I'm a slave too, as you well know, senhor." Then she turned and continued with the ladle.

"But you're a Portugal."

"And never forget that. I am not one of these preto. " She spat out the Portuguese word for Negro.

Atiba continued methodically shoving cane tops into the roaring mouth of the furnace.

"But you were speaking to him just now in his own language. I recognized it."

"He asked a question, and I answered him, that's all."

"Then you do know his language? How?"

"I know many things." She fixed his eyes, continuing in Portuguese. "Perhaps it surprises you Ingles that a mulata can speak at all. I also know how to read, something half the branco rubbish who were in this room tonight probably cannot do."

Katherine knew only a smattering of Portuguese, but she caught the part about some of the branco, the whites, not being able to read. She smiled to think there was probably much truth in that. Certainly almost none of the white indentures could. Further, she suspected that many of the planters had never bothered to learn either.

"I know you were educated in Brazil." Winston was pressing Serina relentlessly. "I was trying to ask you how you know the language of this African?"

She paused, her face a blend of haughtiness and regret. She started to speak, then stopped herself.

"Won't you tell me?"

She turned back, as though speaking to the cauldron. "My mother was Yoruba."

"Is that how you learned?" His voice was skeptical.

"I was taught also by a babalawo, a Yoruba priest, in Brazil."

"What's she saying?" Katherine moved next to him, shielding her eyes from the heat.

"Desculpe, senhora, excuse me." Winston quickly moved forward, continuing in Portuguese as he motioned toward Katherine. "This is..."

"I know perfectly well who Miss Bedford is." Serina interrupted him, still in Portuguese.

Katherine stared at her, not catching the foreign words. "Is she talking about me?"

"She said her mother was a Yoruba." Winston moved between them. "And she said something about a priest."

"Is she some sort of priest? Is that what she said?"

"No." Serina's English answer was quick and curt, then she said something else to Winston, in Portuguese.

"She said she was not, though the women of her mother's family have practiced divination for many generations."

"Divination?" Katherine studied him, puzzled. Then she turned back to Serina,"What do you mean by that?"

Serina was looking at her now, for the first time. "Divination is the way the Yoruba people ask their gods to tell the future."

"How exactly do they go about doing such a thing?"

"Many ways." She turned back to the cauldron.

Winston stood in the silence for a moment, then turned to Katherine. "I think one of the ways is with shells. In Brazil I once saw a Yoruba diviner shaking a tray with small sea-shells in it."

Serina glanced back, now speaking English. "I see you are an Ingles who bothers to try and understand other peoples. One of the few I've ever met. Felicitacao, senhor, my compliments. Yes, that is one of the ways, and the most sacred to a Yoruba. It's called the divination of the sixteen cowrie shells. A Yoruba diviner foretells the will of the gods from how the shells lie in a tray after it has been shaken--by how many lie with the slotted side up. It's the way the gods talk to him."

"Who are these gods they speak to?" Katherine found herself challenged by the mulatto's haughtiness.

Serina continued to stir the cauldron. "You'd not know them, senhora."

"But I would be pleased to hear of them." Katherine's voice was sharp, but then she caught herself and softened it. "Are they something like the Christian God?"

Serina paused, examining Katherine for a moment, and then her eyes assumed a distant expression. "I do not know much about them. I know there is one god like the Christian God. He is the high god, who never shows his powers on earth. But there are many other gods who do. The one the Yoruba call on most is Shango, the god of thunder and lightning, and of fire. His symbol is the double-headed axe. There also is Ogun, who is the god of iron." She hesitated. "And the god of war.''

Katherine studied her. "Do you believe in all these African deities yourself?"

"Who can say what's really true, senhora?" Her smooth skin glistened from the heat. She brushed the hair from her eyes in a graceful motion, as though she were in a drawing room, while her voice retreated again into formality. "The Yoruba even believe that many different things can be true at once. Something no European can ever understand."

"There's something you may not understand, senhora," Winston interjected, speaking now in English. "And I think you well should. The Yoruba in this room also knows the language of the Portugals. Take care what you say."

"It's not possible." She glanced at Atiba contemptuously, continuing loudly in Portuguese. "He's a saltwater preto. "

Before Winston could respond, there was an eruption of shouts and curses from the direction of the mill. They all turned to watch as Benjamin Briggs shoved through the doorway, pointing at Atiba.

"Get that one out here. I warrant he can make them understand." The sweltering room seemed frozen in time, except for Briggs, now motioning at Serina. "Tell him to come out here." He revolved to Winston. "I've a mind to flog all of them."

"What's wrong?"

"The damned mill. I doubled the size of the bundles, the very thing I should've done in the first place, but now the oxen can't turn it properly. I want to try hooking both oxen to one of the sweeps and a pair of Africans on the other. I've harnessed them up, but I can't get them to move." He motioned again for Atiba to accompany him. "This one's got more wit than all the rest together. Maybe I can show him what I want."

Serina gestured toward Atiba, who followed Briggs out the door, into the fresh night air. Katherine stared after him for a moment, then turned back. Winston was speaking to Serina again in Portuguese, but too rapidly to follow.

"Will you tell me one thing more?"

"As you wish, senhor." She did not look up from the cauldron.

"What was going on last night? With the drums?"

She hesitated slightly. "I don't know what you mean."

Winston was towering over her now. "I think you know very well what I mean, senhora. Now tell me, damn it. What were they saying?"

She seemed not to hear him. Through the silence that filled the room, there suddenly came a burst of shouts from the direction of the mill.

Katherine felt fear sweep over her, and she found herself seizing Winston's arm, pulling him toward the doorway. Outside, the planters were milling about in confusion, vague shadows against the torchlight. Then she realized Atiba was trying to wrench off the harness from the necks of the two blacks tied to the sweeps of the mill, while yelling at Briggs in his African language.

She gripped Winston's arm tighter as she watched William Marlott, brandishing a heavy-bladed cane machete, move on Atiba. Then several other planters leapt out of the shadows, grabbed his powerful shoulders, and wrestled him to the ground.

"You'd best flog him here and now." Marlott looked up, sweat running down his face. "It'll be a proper lesson to all the rest."

Briggs nodded toward several of the white indentures and in moments a rope was lashed to Atiba's wrists. Then he was yanked against the mill, his face between the wet rollers. One of the indentures brought forward a braided leather horsewhip.

Katherine turned her face away, back toward the boiling house, not wanting to see.

Serina was standing in the doorway now, staring out blankly, a shimmering moistness in her eyes.

Chapter Four

For almost a month now, any night he could manage, Atiba had slipped unseen from the compound and explored the southern coast of the island, the shore and the upland hills. Now he was sure they could survive after the island became theirs. The branco, the white English, were savages, who destroyed all they touched, but there were still traces of what once had been. Between the fields of sterile cane he had found and tasted the fruits of the sacred earth.

There were groves of wild figs, their dark fruit luscious and astringent, and plump coconuts, their tender core as rich as any in Yorubaland. Along the shore were stands of sea-grape trees, with a sweet purple fruit biting to the tongue. He had also found palm-like trees clustered with the tender papaya, and farther inland there were groves of banana and plantain. He had discovered other trees with large oranges, plump with yellow nectar, as well as pomegranates and tamarind just like those he had known in Ife, his home city. The soil itself gave forth moist melons, wild cucumbers, and the red apples of the prickly cactus. There also were calabash, the hard, round gourds the Ingles had already learned could be hollowed out for cups and basins. The only thing wanting was that staple of the Yoruba people, the yam.

But they would not have to survive from the soil alone. In the thickets he had heard the grunts and squeals of the wild hogs, fat sows foraging nuts, leading their litters. Along the shore he had seen flocks of feeding egrets in the dawn light, ready to be snared and roasted, and at his feet there had been hundreds of land crabs, night prowlers as big as two hands, ripe for boiling as they scurried back to their sand burrows along the shore.

He could not understand why the branco slaves who worked alongside the Yoruba allowed themselves to be fed on boiled corn mush. A natural bounty lay within arm's reach.

The Orisa, those forces in nature that work closest with man, were still present on the island. He could sense them, waiting in the wood of the trees. This ravished place had once been a great forest, like the one north of Ife, and it could be again. If the hand of the Ingles was taken from it, and the spirit of the Orisa, its rightful protectors, freed once more.

The first cooing of the wood dove sounded through the thatched hut, above the chorus of whistling frogs from the pond, signaling the approach of day. Atiba sat motionless in the graying light, crosslegged, at the edge of the mud seat nearest the door, and studied the sixteen cowrie shells as they spun across the reed tray that lay before him. As he watched, eight of the small ovals came to rest mouth up, in a wide crescent, the remainder facing down.

The tiny room was crowded with the men of the Yoruba, their cotton loincloths already drenched with sweat from the early heat. Now all eyes narrowed in apprehension, waiting for this babalawo, the priest of the Yoruba, to speak and interpret the verses that revealed the message in the cowries.

Bi a ko jiya ti o kun agbon

If we do not bear suffering that will fill a basket,

A ko le jore to kun inu aha

We will not receive kindness that will fill a cup.

He paused and signaled the tall, bearded drummer waiting by the door. The man's name was Obewole, and he had once been, many rains ago, the strongest drummer in the entire city of Ife. He nodded and shifted the large drum--the Yoruba iya ilu--that hung at his waist, suspended from a wide shoulder strap. Abruptly the small wooden mallet he held began to dance across the taut goatskin. The verses Atiba had just spoken were repeated exactly, the drum's tone changing in pitch and timbre as Obewole squeezed the cords down its hourglass waist between his arm and his side. Moments later there came the sound of more drums along the length of the southern coast, transmitting his verses inland. In less than a minute all the Yoruba on Barbados had heard their babalawo's exact words.

Then he said something more and shook the tray again. This time five cowries lay open, set as a star. Again he spoke, his eyes far away.

A se'gi oko ma we oko

The tree that swims like a canoe,

A s'agada ja'ri erin

The sword that will cut iron.

Once more the drum sent the words over the morning quiet of the island.

Atiba waited a few moments longer, then slowly looked up and surveyed the expectant faces around him. The shells had spoken, true enough, but the message of the gods was perplexing. Seemingly Shango had counseled endurance, while Ogun foretold war.

He alone was priest, and he alone could interpret this contradictory reading. He knew in his heart what the gods wanted, what they surely must want. Still, the realization brought painful memories. He knew too well what war would mean. He had seen it many times--the flash of mirrored steel in the sunlight, the blood of other men on your hands, the deaths of wise fathers and strong sons.

The worst had been when he and his warriors had stood shoulder to shoulder defending the ancient royal compound at Ife with their lives, when the Fulani from the north had breached the high walls of the city and approached the very entrance of the ruling Oba's palace, those huge sculptured doors guarded by the two sacred bronze leopards. That day he and his men had lost more strong warriors than there were women to mourn them, but by nightfall they had driven out the worshippers of other gods who would take their lands, pillage their compounds, carry away their seed-yams and their youngest wives.

He also knew there could be betrayal. He had seen it during the last season of rains, when the drums had brought news of strangers in the southeastern quarter of the world that was Yorubaland. He and his men had left their compounds and marched all day through the rain. That night, among the trees, they had been fallen upon by Benin slavers, men of black skin who served the branco as a woman serves the payer of her bride-price.

But the men of the Yoruba would never be made to serve. Their gods were too powerful, their ancestors too proud. The Yoruba were destined to rule. Just as they had governed Yorubaland for a thousand years. Theirs was an ancient and noble people, nothing like the half-civilized Ingles on this island. In the great metropolis of Ife, surrounded by miles of massive concentric walls, the Yoruba had lived for generations in wide family compounds built of white clay, their courtyards open to light and air, walking streets paved with brick and stone, wearing embroidered robes woven of finest cotton, sculpting lost-wax bronzes whose artistry no Ingles could even imagine. They did not swelter in patched-together log huts like the Ingles planters here, or in thatched hovels like the Ingles planters' servants. And they paid reverence to gods whose power was far greater than any branco had ever seen.

"The sky has no shadow. It reaches out in all directions to the edge of the world. In it are the sun, the moon, all that is." He paused, waiting for the drums, then continued. "I have gone out into the dark, the void that is night, and I have returned unharmed. I say the Orisa are here, strong. We must make war on the branco to free them once more." He paused again. "No man's day of death can be postponed. It is already known to all the gods. There is nothing we need fear."

After the drums had sent his words across the island, the hut fell quiet. Then there came a voice from a small, wizened man sitting on Atiba's left, a Yoruba older than the rest, with sweat pouring down the wrinkles of his long dark face.

"You are of royal blood, Atiba. Your father Balogun was one of the sixteen royal babalawo of the Oba of Ife, one of the great Awoni. It was he who taught you his skills." He cleared his throat, signifying his importance. "Yet I say you now speak as one who has drunk too many horns of palm wine. We are only men. Ogun will not come forth to carry our shields."

"Old Tahajo, you who are the oldest and wisest here tonight, you know full well I am but a man." Atiba paused, to demonstrate deference. He was chagrined that this elder who now honored his hut had to sit directly on the mud seat, that there was no buffalo skin to take down off the wall for him as there would have been in a compound at Ife. "Though the gods allow me to read their words in the cowries, I still eat the food a woman cooks."

"I know you are a man, son of Balogun, and the finest ever sired in Ife. I knew you even before you grew of age, before you were old enough to tie a cloth between your legs. I was there the day your clan marks were cut in your cheek, those three proud lines that mark you the son of your father. Be his son now, but speak to us today as a man, not as babalawo. Let us hear your own voice."

Atiba nodded and set aside the tray. Then he turned back to the drummer and reached for his gleaming machete. "Since Tahajo wishes it, we will wait for another time to consult more with Ogun and Shango. Now I will hold a sword and speak simply, as a man."

Obewole nodded and picked up the mallet.

"This island was once ruled by the Orisa of the forest. But now there is only cane. Its sweetness is bitter in the mouths of the gods, for it has stolen their home. I say we must destroy it. To do this we will call down the fire of lightning that Shango guards in the sky."

"How can we call down Shango's fire?" The old man spoke again. None of the others in the cramped hut dared question Atiba so boldly. "No man here is consecrated to Shango. We are all warriors, men of Ogun. His power is only over the earth, not the skies."

"I believe there is one on this island whose lineage is Shango. A woman. Perhaps she no longer even knows it. But through her we will reach him." He turned and signaled Obewole to ready the drum. "Now I will speak. Hear me. Shango's spirit is here, on this island. He will help us take away the strength of the Ingles." He paused for the drums, then continued, "I learned on the ship that before the next new moon there will be many more of us here. The other warriors who were betrayed by the Benin traitors will be with us again. Then we will take out the fire of Shango that the Ingles hold prisoner in the boiling house and release it in the night, among the fields of cane. We will burn the compounds of the Ingles and take their muskets. Then we will free the white slaves. They are too craven to free themselves, but they will not stand with their branco masters."

He turned again to Obewole and nodded. "Send the words."