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Book Two

REVOLUTION

Chapter Eight

The Declaration

"We find these Acts of the English Parliament to oppose the freedom, safety, and well-being of this island. We, the present inhabitants of Barbados, with great danger to our persons, and with great charge and trouble, have settled this island in its condition and inhabited the same, and shall we therefore be subjected to the will and command of those that stay at home? Shall we be bound to the government and lordship of a Parliament in which we have no Representatives or persons chosen by us?

It is alleged that the inhabitants of this island have, by cunning and force, usurped a power and formed an independent Government. In truth the Government now used among us is the same that hath always been ratified, and doth everyway agree with the first settlement and Government in this place.

Futhermore, by the above said Act all foreign nations are forbidden to hold any correspondency or traffick with the inhabitants of this island; although all the inhabitants know very well how greatly we have been obliged to the Dutch for our subsistence, and how difficult it would have been for us, without their assistance, ever to have inhabited these places in the Americas, or to have brought them into order. We are still daily aware what necessary comfort they bring us, and that they do sell their commodities a great deal cheaper than our own nation will do. But this comfort would be taken from us by those whose Will would be a Law unto us. However, we declare that we will never be so unthankful to the Netherlanders for their former help and assistance as to deny or forbid them, or any other nation, the freedom of our harbors, and the protection of our Laws, by which they may continue, if they please, all freedom of commerce with us.

Therefore, we declare that whereas we would not be wanting to use all honest means for obtaining a continuance of commerce, trade, and good correspondence with our country, so we will not alienate ourselves from those old heroic virtues of true Englishmen, to prostitute our freedom and privileges, to which we are born, to the will and opinion of anyone; we can not think that there are any amongst us who are so simple, or so unworthily minded, that they would not rather choose a noble death, than forsake their liberties.

The General Assembly of Barbados"

Sir Edmond Calvert studied the long scrolled document in the light of the swinging ship's lantern, stroking his goatee as he read and reread the bold ink script. "Liberty" or "death."

A memorable choice of words, though one he never recalled hearing before. Would the actions of these planters be as heroic as their rhetoric?

Or could the part about a "noble death" be an oblique reference to King Charles' bravery before the executioner's axe? It had impressed all England. But how could they have heard? The king had only just been beheaded, and word could scarcely have yet reached the Barbados Assembly.

One thing was clear, however: Barbados' Assembly had rebelled against the Commonwealth. It had rejected the authority of Parliament and chosen to defy the Navigation Act passed by that body to assert England's economic control of its settlements in the New World.

Wearily he settled the paper onto the table and leaned back in his sea chair, passing his eyes around the timbered cabin and letting his gaze linger on a long painting of Oliver Cromwell hanging near the door. The visage had the intensity of a Puritan zealot, with pasty cheeks, heavy-lidded eyes, and the short, ragged hair that had earned him and all his followers the sobriquet of "Roundhead." He had finally executed the king. England belonged to Cromwell and his Puritan Parliament now, every square inch.

Calvert glanced back at the Declaration, now lying next to his sheathed sword and its wide shoulder strap. England might belong to Parliament, he told himself, but the Americas clearly didn't. The tone of the document revealed a stripe of independence, of courage he could not help admiring.

And now, to appease Cromwell, I've got to bludgeon them into submission. May God help me.

The admiral of the fleet was a short stocky Lincolnshire man, who wore the obligatory ensemble of England's new Puritan leadership: black doublet with wide white collar and cuffs. A trim line of gray hair circled his bald pate, and his face was dominated by a heavy nose too large for his sagging cheeks. In the dull light of the lantern his thin goatee and moustache looked like a growth of pale foliage against his sallow skin.

His father, George Calvert, had once held office in the Court of King Charles, and for that reason he had himself, many years past, received a knighthood from the monarch. But Edmond Calvert had gone to sea early, had risen through merit, and had never supported the king. In fact, he was one of the few captains who kept his ship loyal to Parliament when the navy defected to the side of Charles during the war. In recognition of that, he had been given charge of transporting Cromwell's army to Ireland, to suppress the rebellion there, and he bore the unmistakably resigned air of a man weary of wars and fighting.

The voyage out had been hard, for him as well as for the men, and already he longed to have its business over and done, to settle down to a table covered not with contentious proclamations but spilling over with rabbit pies, blood puddings, honeyed ham. Alas, it would not soon be. Not from the sound of the island's Declaration.

He lowered the wick of the lantern, darkening the shadows across the center table of the Great Cabin, and carefully rolled the document back into a scroll. Then he rose and moved toward the shattered windows of the stern to catch a last look at the island before it was mantled in the quick tropical night.

As he strode across the wide flooring-planks of the cabin, he carefully avoided the remaining shards of glass, mingled with gilded splinters, that lay strewn near the windows. Since all able-bodied seamen were still needed to man the pumps and patch the hull along the waterline, he had prudently postponed the repairs of his own quarters. As he looked about the cabin, he reminded himself how lucky he was to have been on the quarterdeck, away from the flying splinters, when the shelling began.

The first volley from the Point had scored five direct hits along the portside. One English seaman had been killed outright, and eleven others wounded, some gravely. With time only for one answering round, he had exposed the Rainbowe' s stern to a second volley from the breastwork on the Point while bringing her about and making for open sea. That had slammed into the ship's gilded poop, destroying the ornate quartergallery just aft of the Great Cabin, together with all the leaded glass windows.

The island was considerably better prepared than he had been led to believe. Lord Cromwell, he found himself thinking, will not be pleased when he learns of the wanton damage Barbados' rebels have wreaked on the finest frigate in the English navy.

Through the ragged opening he could look out unobstructed onto the rising swells of the Caribbean. A storm was brewing out to sea, to add to the political storm already underway on the island. High, dark thunderheads had risen up in the south, and already spatters of heavy tropical rain ricocheted off the shattered railing of the quartergallery. The very air seemed to almost drip with wetness. He inhaled deeply and asked himself again why he had agreed to come out to the Americas. He might just as easily have retired his command and stayed home. He had earned the rest.

Edmond Calvert had served the Puritan side in the war faithfully for a decade, and over the past five years he had been at the forefront of the fighting. In reward he had been granted the command of the boldest English military campaign in history.

Oliver Cromwell was nothing if not audacious. Having executed the king, he had now conceived a grand assault on Spain's lands in the New World. The plan was still secret, code named Western Design: its purpose, nothing less than the seizure of Spain's richest holdings. Barbados, with its new sugar wealth, would someday be merely a small part of England's new empire in the Americas, envisioned by Cromwell as reaching from Massachusetts to Mexico to Brazil.

But first, there was the small matter of bringing the existing settlements in the Americas back into step.

He had never been sure he had the stomach for the task. Now, after realizing the difficulties that lay ahead in subduing this one small island, he questioned whether he wanted any part of it.

He swabbed his brow, clammy in the sweltering heat, and wondered if all the islands of the Caribbees were like this.

Doubtless as bad or worse, he told himself in dismay. He had seen and experienced Barbados only for a day, but already he had concluded it was a place of fierce sun and half-tamed forest, hot and miserable, its very air almost a smoky green. There was little sign among the thatched-roof shacks along the shore of its reputed great wealth. Could it be the stories at home were gross exaggerations? Or deliberate lies? It scarcely mattered now. Barbados had to be reclaimed. There was no option.

On his left lay the green hills of the island, all but obscured in sudden sheets of rain; on his right the line of English warships he had ordered positioned about the perimeter of Carlisle Bay, cannons run out and primed. He had stationed them there, in readiness, at mid-morning. Then, the siege set, he had summoned his vice admiral and the other commanders to a council on board the Rainbowe.

They had dined on the last remaining capons and drawn up the terms of surrender, to be sent ashore by longboat. The island was imprisoned and isolated. Its capitulation, they told each other, was merely a matter of time.

Except that time would work against the fleet too, he reminded himself. Half those aboard were landsmen, a thrown- together infantry assembled by Cromwell, and the spaces below decks were already fetid, packed with men too sick and scurvy-ravished to stir. Every day more bodies were consigned to the sea. If the island could not be made to surrender in a fortnight, two at most, he might have few men left with the strength to fight.

The Declaration told him he could forget his dream of an easy surrender. Yet he didn't have the men and arms for a frontal assault. He knew it and he wondered how long it would take the islanders to suspect it as well. He had brought a force of some eight hundred men, but now half of them were sick and useless, while the island had a free population of over twenty thousand and a militia said to be nearly seven thousand. Worst of all, they appeared to have first-rate gunners manning their shore emplacements.

Barbados could not be recovered by strength of arms; it could only be frightened, or lured, back into the hands of England.

A knock sounded on the cabin door and he gruffly called permission to enter. Moments later the shadow moving toward him became James Powlett, the young vice admiral of the fleet.

"Your servant, sir." Powlett removed his hat and brushed at its white plume as he strode gingerly through the cabin, picking his way around the glass. He was tall, clean-shaven, with hard blue eyes that never quite concealed his ambition. From the start he had made it no secret he judged Edmond Calvert too indecisive for the job at hand. "Has the reply come yet? I heard the rebels sent out a longboat with a packet."

"Aye, they've replied. But I warrant the tune'll not be to your liking." Calvert gestured toward the Declaration on the table as he studied Powlett, concerned how long he could restrain the vice admiral's hot blood with cool reason. "They've chosen to defy the rule of Parliament. And they've denounced the Navigation Acts, claiming they refuse to halt their trade with the Dutchmen."

"Then we've no course but to show them how royalist rebels are treated."

"Is that what you'd have us do?" The admiral turned back to the window and stared at the rain-swept bay. "And how many men do you think we could set ashore now? Three hundred? Four? That's all we'd be able to muster who're still strong enough to lift a musket or a pike. Whilst the island's militia lies in wait for us--God knows how many thousand-men used to this miserable heat and likely plump as partridges."

"Whatever we can muster, I'll warrant it'll be enough. They're raw planters, not soldiers." Powlett glanced at the Declaration, and decided to read it later. There were two kinds of men in the world, he often asserted: those who dallied and discussed, and those who acted. "We should ready an operation for tomorrow morning and have done with letters and declarations. All we need do is stage a diversion here in the harbor, then set men ashore up the coast at Jamestown."

Calvert tugged at his wisp of a goatee and wondered momentarily how he could most diplomatically advise Powlett he was a hotheaded fool. Then he decided to dispense with diplomacy. "Those 'raw planters,' as you'd have them, managed to hole this flagship five times from their battery up there on the Point. So what makes you think they couldn't just as readily turn back an invasion? And if they did, what then, sir?" He watched Powlett's face harden, but he continued. "I can imagine no quicker way to jeopardize what little advantage we might have. And that advantage, sir, is they still don't know how weak we really are. We've got to conserve our strength, and try to organize our support on the island. We need to make contact with any here who'd support Parliament, and have them join with us when we land."

The question now, he thought ruefully, is how much support we actually have.

Sir Edmond Calvert, never having been convinced that beheading the lawful sovereign of England would be prudent, had opposed it from the start. Events appeared to have shown him right. Alive, King Charles had been reviled the length of the land for his arrogance and his Papist sympathies; dead, you'd think him a sovereign the equal of Elizabeth, given the way people suddenly began eulogizing him, that very same day. His execution had made him a martyr. And if royalist sentiment was swelling in England, in the wake of his death, how much more might there be here in the Americas--now flooded with refugees loyal to the monarchy.

He watched his second-in-command slowly redden with anger as he continued, "I tell you we can only reclaim this island if it's divided. Our job now, sir, is to reason first, and only then resort to arms. We have to make them see their interests lie with the future England can provide."

"Well, sir, if you'd choose that tack, then you can set it to the test quick enough. What about those men who've been swimming out to the ships all day, offering to be part of the invasion? I'd call that support."

"Aye, it gave me hope at first. Then I talked with some of them, and learned they're mostly indentured servants. They claimed a rumor's going round the island that we're here to set them free. For all they care, we could as well be Spaniards." Calvert sighed. "I asked some of them about defenses on the island, and learned nothing I didn't already know. So I sent them back ashore, one and all. What we need now are fresh provisions, not more mouths to feed."

That's the biggest question, he told himself again. Who'll be starved out first: a blockaded island or a fleet of ships with scarcely enough victuals to last out another fortnight?

He turned back to the table, reached for the Declaration, and shoved it toward Powlett. "I think you'd do well to peruse this, sir. There's a tone of Defiance here that's unsettling. I don't know if it's genuine, or a bluff. It's the unknowns that trouble me now, the damned uncertainties."

Those uncertainties, he found himself thinking, went far beyond Barbados. According to the first steps of Cromwell's plan, after this centerpiece of the Caribbees had been subdued, part of the fleet was to continue on to any other of the settlements that remained defiant. But Cromwell's advisors felt that would probably not be necessary: after Barbados acknowledged the Commonwealth, the rest of the colonies were expected to follow suit. Then the Western Design could be set into motion, with Calvert's shipboard infantry augmented by fighting men from the island.

The trouble with Cromwell's scheme, he now realized, was that it worked both ways. If Barbados succeeded in defying England's new government, then Virginia, Bermuda, the other islands of the Caribbees, all might also disown the Commonwealth. There even was talk they might try attaching themselves to Holland. It would be the end of English taxes and trade anywhere in the Americas except for that scrawny settlement of fanatic Puritans up in "New England." There would surely be no hope for the Western Design to succeed, and Edmond Calvert would be remembered as the man who lost England's richest lands.

While Powlett studied the Declaration, skepticism growing on his face, Calvert turned back to the window and stared at the rainswept harbor, where a line of Dutch merchant fluyts bobbed at anchor.

Good God. That's the answer. Maybe we can't land infantry, but we most assuredly can go in and take those damned Dutchmen and their cargo. They're bound to have provisions aboard. It's our best hope for keeping up the blockade. And taking them will serve another purpose, too. It'll send the Commonwealth's message loud and clear to all Holland's merchants: that trade in English settlements is for England.

"There's presumption here, sir, that begs for a reply." The vice admiral tossed the Declaration back onto the table. "I still say the fittest answer is with powder and shot. There's been enough paper sent ashore already."

"I'm still in command, Mr. Powlett, whether you choose to approve or no. There'll be no more ordnance used till we're sure there's no other way." He walked back to the table and slumped wearily into his chair. Already waiting in front of him were paper and an inkwell. What, he asked himself, would he write? How could he describe the bright new future that awaited a full partnership between England and these American settlers?

The colonies in the Caribbees and along the Atlantic seaboard were merely England's first foothold in the New World. Someday they would be part of a vast empire stretching the length of the Americas. The holdings of Spain would fall soon, and after that England would likely declare war against Holland and take over Dutch holdings as well. There was already talk of that in London. The future was rich and wide, and English.

I just have to make them see the future. A future of partnership, not Defiance; one that'll bring wealth to England and prosperity to her colonies. They have to be made to understand that this Declaration is the first and last that'll ever be penned in the Americas.

He turned and dismissed Powlett with a stiff nod. Then he listened a moment longer to the drumbeat of tropical rain on the deck above. It sounded wild now, uncontrollable, just like the spirits of nature he sensed lurking above the brooding land mass off his portside bow. Would this dark, lush island of the Caribbees harken to reason? Or would it foolishly choose to destroy itself with war?

He sighed in frustration, inked his quill, and leaned forward to write.

The Assembly Room was crowded to capacity, its dense, humid air rank with sweating bodies. Above the roar of wind and rain against the shutters, arguments sounded the length of the long oak table. Seated down one side and around the end were the twenty-two members of the Assembly; across from them were the twelve members of the Council. At the back of the room milled others who had been invited. Winston was there, along with Anthony Walrond and Katherine.

Dalby Bedford was standing by the window, holding open the shutters and squinting through the rain-swept dusk as he studied the mast lights of the warships encircling the harbor. He wiped the rain and sweat from his face with a large handkerchief, then turned and walked back to his chair at the head of the table.

"Enough, gentlemen. We've all heard it already." He waved his hand for quiet. "Let me try and sum up. Our Declaration has been delivered, which means we've formally rejected all their terms as they now stand. The question before us tonight is whether we try and see if there's room for negotiation, or whether we refuse a compromise and finish preparing to meet an invasion."

Katherine listened to the words and sensed his uneasiness. She knew what his real worries were: how long would it be before the awkward peace between the Council and the Assembly fell apart in squabbling? What terms could the admiral of the fleet offer that would split the island, giving enough of the planters an advantage that they would betray the rest? Who would be the first to waver?

The opening terms sent ashore by Edmond Calvert had sent a shock wave across Barbados--its standing Assembly and Council were both to be dissolved immediately. In future, England's New World settlements would be governed through Parliament. A powerless new Council would be appointed from London, and the Assembly, equally impotent, would eventually be filled by new elections scheduled at the pleasure of Commons. Added to that were the new "Navigation Acts," bringing high English prices and shipping fees. The suddenly ripening plum of the Americas would be plucked.

The terms, signed by the admiral, had been ferried ashore by longboat and delivered directly to Dalby Bedford at the compound. Members of Council and the Assembly had already been gathering in the Assembly Room by then, anxious to hear the conditions read.

Katherine remembered the worry on the governor's face as he had finished dressing to go down and read the fleet's ultimatum. "The first thing I have to do is get them to agree on something, anything. If they start quarreling again, we're good as lost."

"Then try to avoid the question of recognizing Parliament." She'd watched him search for his plumed hat and rose to fetch it from the corner stand by the door. "I suspect most of the Council would be tempted to give in and do that, on the idea it might postpone a fight and give them time to finish this year's sugar while they appeal to Parliament to soften the terms."

"Aye. The sugar's all they care about. That's why I think we best go at it backwards." He'd reached for his cane and tested it thoughtfully against the wide boards of the floor. "I think I'll start by raising that business in the Navigation Acts about not letting the Dutchmen trade. Not a man in the room'll agree to that, not even the Council. I'll have them vote to reject those, then see if that'll bring us enough unity to proceed to the next step."

Just as he had predicted, the Council and the Assembly had voted unanimously to defy the new Navigation Acts. They could never endure an English stranglehold on island commerce, regardless of the other consequences.

They had immediately drafted their own reply to the admiral's terms, a Declaration denouncing them and refusing to comply, and sent it back to the fleet. The question left unresolved, to await this evening's session, was whether they should agree to negotiate with Parliament at all....

"I say there's nothing to negotiate." Benjamin Briggs rose to his feet and faced the candle-lit room. "If we agreed to talk, it'd be the same as recognizing Parliament."

"Are you saying the Council's decided to oppose recognition?" Bedford examined him in surprise. Perhaps the business about dissolving the Council had finally made an impression after all.

"Unalterably, sir. We've talked it over, and we're beginning to think this idea of independence that came up a while back could have some merit." Briggs gazed around the room. "I'll grant I was of a different mind before we heard the terms. But now I say we stand firm. If we bow to the rule of Parliament, where we've got no representation, we'll never be rid of these Navigation Acts. And that's the end of free trade, free markets. We'd as well be slaves ourselves." He pushed back his black hat, revealing a leathery brow furrowed by the strain. "I'll wager Virginia will stand with us when their time comes. But the fleet's been sent here first, so for now we'll have to carry the burden of resistance ourselves, and so be it. Speaking for the Council, you know we've already ordered our militia out. They're to stay mustered till this thing's finished. We'd have the rest of the island's militia called up now, those men controlled by the Assembly, and have them on the beaches by daybreak."

Dalby Bedford looked down the line of faces and knew he had gained the first step. The Council was with him. But now, he wondered suddenly, what about the Assembly?

As an interim measure, eight hundred men had already been posted along the western and southern shorelines, militia from the regiments commanded by the members of the Council. The small freeholders had not yet mustered. Many of the men with five-acre plots were already voicing reservations about entering an all-out war with England, especially when its main purpose seemed to be preserving free markets for the big plantation owners' sugar.

"I think it's time we talked about cavalry." Nicholas Whittington joined in, wiping his beard as he lifted his voice above the din of wind and rain. "I'd say there's apt to be at least four hundred horses on the island that we could pull together." He glared pointedly across the table at the Assemblymen, brown-faced men in tattered waistcoats. "That means every horse, in every parish. We have to make a show of force if we're to negotiate from strength. I propose we make an accounting, parish by parish. Any man with a nag who fails to bring it up for muster should be hanged for treason."

As she watched the members of the Assembly start to mumble uneasily, Katherine realized that a horse represented a sizable investment for most small freeholders. How much use would they be anyway, she found herself wondering. The horses on the island were mostly for pulling plows. And the "cavalry" riding them would be farmers with rusty pikes.

As the arguing in the room continued, she found herself thinking about Hugh Winston. The sight of him firing down on the English navy through the mists of dawn had erased all her previous contempt. Never before had she seen a man so resolute. She remembered again the way he had taken her arm, there at the last. Why had he done it?

She turned to study him, his lined face still smeared with oily traces of powder smoke, and told herself they were a matched pair. She had determination too. He'd soon realize that, even if he didn't now.

At the moment he was deep in a private conference with Johan Ruyters, who had asked to be present to speak for Dutch trading interests. The two of them had worked together all day, through the sultry heat that always preceded a storm. Winston and his men had helped heave the heavy Dutch guns onto makeshift barges and ferry them ashore, to be moved up the coast with ox-drawn wagons. Now he looked bone tired. She could almost feel the ache he must have in his back.

As she stood studying Winston, her thoughts wandered again to Anthony. He had worked all day too, riding along the shore and reviewing the militia deployed to defend key points along the coast.

What was this sudden ambivalence she felt toward him? He was tall, like Winston, and altogether quite handsome. More handsome by half than Hugh Winston, come to that. No, it was something about Winston's manner that excited her more than Anthony did. He was... yes, he was dangerous.

She laughed to realize she could find that appealing. It violated all the common sense she'd so carefully cultivated over the years. Again she found herself wondering what he'd be like as a lover....

"And, sir, what then? After we've offered up our horses and our muskets and servants for your militia?" One of the members of the Assembly suddenly rose and faced the Council. It was John Russell, a tall, rawboned freeholder who held fifteen acres on the north side. "Who's to protect our wives and families after that?" He paused nervously to clear his throat and peered down the table. "To be frank, gentlemen, we're beginning to grow fearful of all these Africans that certain of you've bought and settled here now. With every white man on the island mustered and on the coast, together with all our horses and our muskets, we'll not have any way to defend our own if these new slaves decide to stage a revolt. And don't say it can't happen. Remember that rising amongst the indentures two years ago. Though we promptly hanged a dozen of the instigators and brought an end to it, we've taught no such lesson to these blacks. If they were to start something, say in the hills up in mid-island, we'd be hard pressed to stop them from slaughtering who they wished with those cane knives they use." He received supportive nods from several other Assemblymen. "We'd be leaving ourselves defenseless if we mustered every able-bodied man and horse down onto the shore."

"If that's all that's troubling you, then you can ease your minds." Briggs pushed back his hat and smiled. "All the blacks've been confined to quarters, to the man, for the duration. Besides, they're scattered over the island, so there's no way they can organize anything. There's no call for alarm, I give you my solemn word. They're unarmed now and docile as lambs."

"But what about those cane knives we see them carrying in the fields?"

"Those have all been collected. The Africans've got no weapons. There's nothing they can do save beat on drums, which seems to keep them occupied more and more lately, anyhow." He looked around the room, pleased to see that the reassuring tone in his voice was having the desired effect. "I think we'd best put our heads to more pressing matters, such as the condition of the breastworks here and along the coasts." He turned toward Winston. "You've not had much to say tonight, sir, concerning today's work. I, for one, would welcome a word on the condition of our ordnance."

All eyes at the table shifted to Winston, now standing by the window and holding a shutter pried open to watch as the winds and rain bent the tops of the tall palms outside. Slowly he turned, his lanky form seeming to lengthen, and surveyed the room. His eyes told Katherine he was worried; she'd begun to know his moods.

"The ordnance lent by the Dutchmen is in place now." He thumbed at Ruyters. "For which I'd say a round of thanks is overdue."

"Hear, hear." The planters' voices chorused, and Ruyters nodded his acknowledgement. Then he whispered something quickly to Winston and disappeared out the door, into the rain. The seaman waited, watching him go, then continued, "You've got gunners--some my men and some yours--assigned now at the Point, as well as at Jamestown and over at Oistins Bay. I figure there's nowhere else they can try a landing in force... though they always might try slipping a few men ashore with longboats somewhere along the coast. That's why you've got to keep the militia out and ready."

"But if they do try landing in some spot where we've got no cannon, what then, sir?" Briggs' voice projected above the howl of the storm.

"You've got ordnance in all the locations where they can safely put in with a frigate. Any other spot would mean a slow, dangerous approach. But if they try it, your militia should be able to meet them at the water's edge and turn them back. That is, if you can keep your men mustered." He straightened his pistols and pulled his cloak about him. "Now if it's all the same, I think I'll leave you to your deliberations. I've finished what it was I'd offered to do."

"One moment. Captain, if you please." Anthony Walrond stepped in front of him as the crowd began to part. "I think you've done considerably more than you proposed. Unless it included basely betraying the island."

Winston stopped and looked at him. "I'm tired enough to let that pass."

"Are you indeed, sir?" Walrond turned toward the table. "We haven't yet thanked Captain Winston for his other service, that being whilst he was making a show of helping deploy the Dutchmen's ordnance, he ordered a good fifty of his new men, those Irish indentures he's taken, to swim out to the ships of the fleet and offer their services to the Roundheads." He turned to the room. "It was base treachery. And reason enough for a hempen collar... if more was required."

"You, sir, can go straight to hell." Winston turned and started pushing through the planters, angrily proceeding toward the door.

Katherine stared at him, disbelieving. Before he could reach the exit, she elbowed her way through the crowd and confronted him. "Is what he said true?"

He pushed back his hair and looked down at her. "It's really not your concern. Miss Bedford."

"Then you've much to explain, if not to me, to the men in this room."

"I didn't come down here tonight to start explaining." He gestured toward the door. "If you want to hear about it, then why not call in some of the men who swam out to the ships. They're back now and they're outside in the rain, or were. I'm sure they'll be pleased to confess the full details. I have no intention of responding to Master Walrond's inquisition."

"Then we most certainly will call them in." She pushed her way briskly to the doorway. Outside a crowd of indentures stood huddled in the sheets of rain. Timothy Farrell, who had appointed himself leader, was by the door waiting for Winston. The planters watched as Katherine motioned him in.

He stepped uncertainly through the doorway, bowing, and then he removed his straw hat deferentially. "Can I be of service to Yor Ladyship?"

"You can explain yourself, sir." She seized his arm and escorted him to the head of the table. "Is it true Captain Winston ordered you and those men out there to swim out to the ships and offer to consort with their forces?"

"We wasn't offerin' to consort, beggin' Yor Ladyship's pardon. Not at all. That's not our inclination, as I'm a Christian." Farrell grinned. "No, by the Holy Virgin, what we did was offer to help them." He glanced toward Winston, puzzling. "An' whilst they were mullin' that over, we got a good look below decks. An' like I reported to His Worship, I'd say they've not got provision left to last more'n a fortnight. An' a good half the men sailin' with them are so rotted with scurvy they'd be pressed to carry a half-pike across this room. Aye, between decks they're all cursin' the admiral an' sayin' he's brought 'em out here to starve in the middle o' this plagued, sun-cooked wilderness."

She turned slowly toward Winston. "You sent these men out as spies?"

"Who else were we going to send?" He started again toward the door.

"Well, you could have told us, sir."

"So some of the Puritan sympathizers on this island could have swum out after them and seen to it that my men were shot, or hanged from a yardarm. Pox on it."

"But this changes everything," Briggs interjected, his face flooding with pleasure. "This man's saying the fleet's not got the force to try a landing."

"You only believe half of what you hear." Winston paused to look around the room. "Even if it's true, it probably just means they'll have to attack sooner. Before their supplies get lower and they lose even more men." He pushed on toward the door. "Desperate men do desperate things. There'll be an attempt on the island, you can count on it. And you'll fight best if you're desperate too." Suddenly he stopped again and glanced back at Briggs. "By the way, I don't know exactly who your speech on the docile slaves was intended to fool. Your Africans just may have some plans afoot. I doubt they care overmuch who wins this war, you or Cromwell. So look to it and good night." He turned and gestured for Farrell to follow as he walked out into the blowing night rain.

Katherine watched him leave, recoiling once more against his insolence. Or maybe admiring him for it. She moved quickly through the milling crowd to the side of Dalby Bedford, bent over and whispered something to him, then turned and slipped out the door.

The burst of rain struck her in the face, and the wind blew her hair across her eyes. Winston had already started off down the hill, the crowd of indentures trailing after. Like puppy dogs, she found herself thinking. He certainly has a way with his men. She caught up her long skirts and pushed through the crowd, their straw hats and shoes now bedraggled by the downpour.

"Captain, I suppose we owe you an apology, and I've come to offer it." She finally reached his side. "No one else thought of having some men swim out to spy on the fleet."

"Katherine, no one else in there has thought of a lot of things. They're too busy arguing about who can spare a draft horse."

"What do you mean?" She looked up. "Thought of what?"

"First, they should be off-loading what's left of the food and supplies on those Dutch merchantmen blockaded in the bay. Ruyters agreed just now to put his men on it tonight, but I'm afraid it's too late." He stared through the rain, toward the bay. "Something tells me the fleet's likely to move in tomorrow and commandeer whatever ships they can get their hands on. It's exactly what any good commander would do." He continued bitterly. "There're enough supplies on those merchantmen, flour and dried corn, to feed the island for weeks. Particularly on the ships that made port the last few days and haven't finished unlading. Believe me, you're going to need it, unless you expect to start living on sugar cane and horsemeat. But this island's too busy fighting with itself right now to listen to anybody." He turned and headed on through the cluster of indentures. "I'm going down to try and off-load my own supplies tonight, before it's too late."

She seized her skirts and pushed after him. "Well, I still want to thank you... Hugh. For what you've done for us."

He met her gaze, smiled through the rain, and raised his hand to stop her. "Wait a minute. Before you go any further--and maybe say something foolish--you'd better know I'm not doing it for your little island of Barbados."

"But you're helping us fight to stay a free state. If we can stand up to the fleet, then we can secure home rule, the first in the Americas. After us, maybe Virginia will do the same. Who knows, then some of the other settlements will probably..."

"A free state?" He seemed to snort. "Free for who? These greedy planters? Nobody else here'll be free." He pulled his cloak tighter about him. "Just so you'll understand, let me assure you I'm not fighting to help make Barbados anything. I'm just trying to make sure I keep my frigate. Besides, Barbados'll never be 'free,' to use that word you seem to like so much. The most that'll ever happen here is it'll change masters. Look around you. It's going to be a settlement of slaves and slaveholders forever, owned and squeezed by a Council, or a Parliament, or a king, or a somebody. From now on."

"You're wrong." Why did he try so hard to be infuriating? "Home rule here is just a start. Someday there'll be no more indentures, and who knows, maybe one day they'll even decide to let the slaves be free." She wanted to grab him and shake him, he was so shortsighted. "You just refuse to try and understand. Isn't there anything you care about?"

"I care about living life my own way. It may not sound like much of a cause, but it's taken me long enough to get around to it. I've given up thinking that one day I'll go back home and work for the honor of the Winston name, or settle down and grow fat on some sugar plantation in the Caribbees." He turned on her, almost shouting against the storm. "Let me tell you something. I'm through living by somebody else's rules. Right now I just want to get out. Out to a place I'll make for myself. So if getting there means I first have to fight alongside the likes of Briggs and Walrond to escape Barbados, then that's what it'll be. And when I fight, make no mistake, I don't plan to lose."

"That's quite a speech. How long have you been practicing it?" She seized his arm. "And the point, I take it, is that you like to run away from difficulties?"

"That's exactly right, and I wish you'd be good enough to have a brief word with the admiral of the fleet out there about it." He was smiling again, his face almost impish in the rain. "Tell him there's a well-known American smuggler who'd be pleased to sail out of here if he'd just open up the blockade for an hour or so."

"Well, why not ask him yourself? He might be relieved, if only to be rid of you and your gunners." She waited till a roll of thunder died away. "And after you've sailed away? What then?"

"I plan to make my own way. Just as I said. I'm heading west by northwest, to maybe turn around a few things here in the Caribbean. But right now I've got more pressing matters, namely keeping my provisions, and those of the Dutchmen, out of the hands of the fleet." He turned and continued toward the shore, a dim expanse of sand shrouded in dark and rain. "So you'd best go on back to the Assembly Room, Katherine, unless you plan to gather up those petticoats and lend me a hand."

"Perhaps I just will." She caught up with him, matching his stride.

"What?"

"Since you think I'm so useless, you might be surprised to know I can carry tubs of Hollander cheese as well as you can." She was holding her skirts out of the mud. "Why shouldn't I? We both want the same thing, to starve the Roundheads. We just want it for different reasons."

"It's no place for a woman down here."

"You said that to me once before. When we were going out to Briggs' sugarworks. Frankly I'm a little weary of hearing it, so why don't you find another excuse to try telling me what to do."

He stopped and looked down again. Waves of rain battered against the creases in his face. "All right, Katherine. Or Katy, as I've heard your father call you. If you want to help, then come on. But you've got to get into some breeches if you don't want to drown." His dour expression melted into a smile. "I'll try and find you a pair on the Defiance. It'll be a long night's work."

"You can tell everyone I'm one of your seamen. Or one of the indentures."

He looked down at her bodice and exploded with laughter. "I don't think anybody's apt to mistake you for one of them. But hadn't you best tell somebody where you'll be?"

"What I do is my own business." She looked past him, toward the shore.

"So be it." A long fork of lightning burst across the sky, illuminating the shoreline ahead of them.

The muddy road was leveling out now as they neared the bay. The ruts, which ran like tiny rapids down the hill, had become placid streams, curving their way seaward. Ahead, the mast lanterns of the Dutch merchantmen swayed arcs through the dark, and the silhouettes of Dutch seamen milled along the shore, their voices muffled, ghostlike in the rain. Then she noticed the squat form of Johan Ruyters trudging toward them.

"Pox on it, we can't unlade in this squall. And in the dark besides. There's doubtless a storm brewing out there, maybe even a huracan, from the looks of the swell." He paused to nod at Katherine. "Your servant, madam." Then he turned back at Winston. "There's little we can do now, on my honor."

"Well, I'll tell you one thing you can do, if you've got the brass."

"And what might that be, sir?"

"Just run all the ships aground here along the shore. That way they can't be taken, and then we can unlade after the storm runs its course."

"Aye, that's a possibility I'd considered. In truth I'm thinking I might give it a try. The Zeelander's been aground before. Her keel's fine oak, for all the barnacles." His voice was heavy with rue. "But I've asked around, and most of the other men don't want to run the risk."

"Well, you're right about the squall. From the looks of the sea, I'd agree we can't work in this weather. So maybe I'll just go ahead and run the Defiance aground." He studied the ship, now rolling in the swell and straining at her anchor lines. "There'll never be a better time, with the bay up the way it is now."

"God's blood, it's a quandary." Ruyters turned and peered toward the horizon. The mast lights of the fleet were all but lost in the sheets of rain. "I wish I knew what those bastards are thinking right now. But it's odds they'll try to move in and pilfer our provisions as soon as the sea lets up. Moreover, we'd be fools to try using any ordnance on them, bottled in the way we are. They've got us trapped, since they surely know the battery up there on the Point won't open fire on the bay while we're in it." He whirled on Winston. "You wouldn't, would you?"

"And risk putting a round through the side of these ships here? Not a chance!"

"Aye, they'll reason that out by tomorrow, no doubt. So grounding these frigates may be the only way we can keep them out of English hands. Damn it all, I'd best go ahead and bring her up, before the seas get any worse." He bowed toward Katherine. "Your most obedient, madam. If you'll be good enough to grant me leave..."

"Now don't try anything foolish." Winston was eyeing him.

"What are you suggesting?"

"Don't go thinking you'll make a run for it in the storm. You'll never steer past the reefs."

"Aye. I've given that passing thought as well. If I had a bit more ballast, I'd be tempted." He spat into the rain, then looked back. "And I'd take odds you've considered the same."

"But I've not got the ballast either. Or that Spaniard of yours we agreed on. Don't forget our bargain."

"My word's always been my bond, sir, though I wonder if there'll ever be any sugar to ship. For that matter, you may be lucky ever to see open seas again yourself. Just like the rest of us." Ruyters sighed. "Aye, every Christian here tonight's wishing he'd never heard of Barbados." He nodded farewell and turned to wade toward a waiting longboat. In moments he had disappeared into the rain.

"Well, Miss Katy Bedford, unless the rest of the Dutchmen have the foresight Ruyters has, those merchantmen out there and all their provisions will be in the fleet's hands by sundown tomorrow." He reached for her arm. "But not the Defiance. Come on and I'll get you a set of dry clothes. And maybe a tankard of sack to warm you up. We're about to go on a very short and very rough voyage."

She watched as he walked to where the indentures were waiting. He seemed to be ordering them to find shelter and return in the morning. Timothy Farrell spoke something in return. Winston paused a moment, shrugged and rummaged his pockets, then handed him a few coins. The Irishmen all saluted before heading off toward the cluster of taverns over next to the bridge.

"Come on." He came trudging back. "The longboat's moored down here, if it hasn't been washed out to sea yet."

"Where're your men?"

"My gunnery mates are at the batteries, and the rest of the lads are assigned to the militia. I ordered John and a few of the boys to stay on board to keep an eye on her, but the rest are gone." His face seemed drawn. "Have no fear. In this sea it'll be no trick to ground her. Once we weigh the anchor, the swell should do the rest."

As he led her into the water, the surf splashing against her shins, she reflected that the salt would ruin her taffeta petticoats, then decided she didn't care. The thrill of the night and the sea were worth it.

Directly ahead of them a small longboat bobbed in the water. "Grab your skirts, and I'll hoist you in."

She had barely managed to seize the sides of her dress before a wave washed over them both. She was still sputtering, salt in her mouth, as he swept her up into his arms and settled her over the side. She gasped as the boat dipped crazily in the swell, pounded by the sheets of rain.

He traced the mooring line back to the post at the shore where it had been tied and quickly loosened it. Then he shoved the boat out to sea and rolled over the side, as easily as though he were dropping into a hammock.

The winds lashed rain against them as he strained at the oars, but slowly they made way toward the dark bulk of the Defiance. He rowed into the leeward side and in moments John Mewes was there, reaching for the line to draw them alongside. He examined Katherine with a puzzled expression as he gazed down at them.

" 'Tis quite a night, m'lady, by my life." He reached to take her hand as Winston hoisted her up. "Welcome aboard. No time for Godfearin' folk to be at sea in a longboat, that I'll warrant."

"That it's not, John." Winston grasped a deadeye and drew himself over the side. "Call the lads to station. After I take Miss Bedford back to the cabin and find a dry change of clothes for her, we're going to weigh anchor and try beaching the ship."

"Aye." Mewes beamed as he squinted through the rain. "In truth, I've been thinkin' the same myself. The fomicatin' Roundheads'll be in the bay and aimin' to take prizes soon as the weather breaks." He headed toward the quarterdeck. "But they'll never get this beauty, God is my witness."

"Try hoisting the spritsail, John, and see if you can bring the bow about." He took Katherine's hand as he helped her duck under the shrouds. "This way, Katy."

"What do you have for me to wear?" She steadied herself against a railing as the slippery deck heaved in the waves, but Winston urged her forward. He was still gripping her hand as he led her into the companionway, a dark hallway beneath the quarterdeck illuminated by a single lantern swaying in the gusts of wind.

"We don't regularly sail with women in the crew." His words were almost lost in a clap of thunder as he shoved open the door of the Great Cabin. "What would you say to some of my breeches and a doublet?"

"What would you say to it?"

He laughed and swept the dripping hair out of his eyes as he ushered her in. "I'd say I prefer seeing women in dresses. But we'll both have to make do." He walked to his locker, seeming not to notice the roll of the ship, and flipped open the lid. "Take your pick while I go topside." He gestured toward the sideboard. "And there's port and some tankards in there."

"How'll I loosen my bodice?"

"Send for your maid, as always." There was a scream of wind down the companionway as he wrenched open the door, then slammed it again behind him. She was still grasping the table, trying to steady herself against the roll of the ship, when she heard muffled shouts from the decks above and then the rattle of a chain.

She reached back and began to work at the knot in the long laces that secured her bodice. English fashions, which she found absurd in sweltering Barbados, required all women of condition to wear this heavy corset, which laced all the way up the back, over their shift.

This morning it had been two layers of whitest linen, with strips of whalebone sewn between and dainty puffed sleeves attached, but now it was soaked with salt water and brown from the sand and flotsam of the bay. She tugged and wriggled until it was loose enough to draw over her head.

She drew a breath of relief as her breasts came free beneath her shift, and then she wadded the bodice into a soggy bundle and discarded it onto the floor of the cabin. Her wet shift still clung to her and she looked down for a moment, taking pleasure in the full curve of her body. Next she began unpinning her skirt at the spot where it had been looped up stylishly to display her petticoat.

The ship rolled again and the lid of the locker dropped shut. As the floor tilted back to an even keel, she quickly stepped out of the soaking dress and petticoats, letting them collapse onto the planking in a dripping heap. In the light of the swinging lamp the once-blue taffeta looked a muddy gray.

The ship suddenly pitched backward, followed by a low groan that sounded through the timbers as it shuddered to a dead stop. The floor of the cabin lay at a tilt, sloping down toward the stern.

She stepped to the locker and pried the lid back open. Inside were several changes of canvas breeches, as well as a fine striped silk pair. She laughed as she pulled them out to inspect them in the flickering light. What would he say if I were to put these on, she wondered? They're doubtless part of his vain pride.

Without hesitating she shook out the legs and drew them on under her wet shift. There was no mirror, but as she tied the waiststring she felt their sensuous snugness about her thighs. The legs were short, intended to fit into hose or boots, and they revealed her fine turn of ankle. Next she lifted out a velvet doublet, blue and embroidered, with gold buttons down the front. She admired it a moment, mildly surprised that he would own such a fine garment, then laid it on the table while she pulled her dripping shift over her head.

The rush of air against her skin made her suddenly aware how hot and sultry the cabin really was. Impulsively she walked back to the windows aft and unlatched them. Outside the sea churned and pounded against the stern, while dark rain still beat against the quartergallery. She took a deep breath as she felt the cooling breeze wash over her clammy face and breasts. She was wondering how her hair must look when she heard a voice.

"You forgot your port."

She gasped quietly as she turned. Hugh Winston was standing beside her, holding out a tankard. "Well, do you care to take it?" He smiled and glanced down at her breasts.

"My, but that was no time at all." She reached for the tankard, then looked back toward the table where her wet shift lay.

"Grounding a ship's no trick. You just weigh the anchor and pray she comes about. Getting her afloat again's the difficulty." He leaned against the window frame and lifted his tankard. "So here's to freedom again someday, Katy. Mine, yours."

She started to drink, then remembered herself and turned toward the table to retrieve her shift.

"I don't expect you'll be needing that."

She continued purposefully across the cabin. "Well, sir, I didn't expect..."

"Oh, don't start now being a coquette. I like you too much the way you are." A stroke of lightning split down the sky behind him. He drank again, then set down his tankard and was moving toward her.

"I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"Take it as a compliment. I despise intriguing women." He seemed to look through her. "Though you do always manage to get whatever you're after, one way or other, going about it your own way." A clap of thunder sounded through the open stern windows. "I'd also wager you've had your share of experience in certain personal matters. For which I suppose there's your royalist gallant to thank."

"That's scarcely your concern, is it? You've no claim over me." She settled her tankard on the table, reached for his velvet doublet--at least it was dry--and started draping it over her bare shoulders. "Nor am I sure I relish bluntness as much as you appear to."

"It's my fashion. I've been out in the Caribbees too long, dodging musket balls, to bother with a lot of fancy court chatter."

"There's bluntness, and there's good breeding. I trust you at least haven't forgotten the difference."

"I suppose you think you can enlighten me."

"Well, since I'm wearing your breeches, which appear meant for a gentleman, perhaps it'd not be amiss to teach you how to address a lady." She stepped next to him, her eyes mischievous. "Try repeating after me. 'Yours is a comely shape, Madam, on my life, that delights my very heart. And your fine visage might shame a cherubim.' " She suppressed a smile at his dumbfounded look, then continued. " 'Those eyes fire my thoughts with promised sweetness, and those lips are like petals of the rose...' "

"God's blood!" He caught her open doublet and drew her toward him. "If it's a fop you'd have me be, I suppose the rest could probably go something like '... begging to be kissed. They seem fine and soft. Are they kind as well?' " He slipped his arms about her and pulled her against his wet jerkin.

After the first shock, she realized he tasted of salt and gunpowder. As a sudden gust of rain from the window extinguished the sea lamp, she felt herself being slowly lowered against the heavy oak table in the center of the cabin.

Now his mouth had moved to her breasts, as he half-kissed, half-bit her nipples--whether in desire or merely to tease she could not tell. Finally she reached and drew his face up to hers.

"I'm not in love with you, Captain Winston. Never expect that. I could never give any man that power over me." She laughed at his startled eyes. "But I wouldn't mind if you wanted me."

"Katy, I've wanted you for a fortnight." He drew back and looked at her. "I had half a mind not to let you away from this ship the last time you were here. This time I don't plan to make the same mistake. Except I don't like seeing you in my own silk breeches."

"I think they fit me very nicely."

"Maybe it's time I showed you what I think." He abruptly drew her up and seized the string at her waist. In a single motion, he pulled it open and slipped away the striped legs. Then he admired her a moment as he drew his hands appreciatively down her long legs. "Now I'd like to show you how one man who's forgot his London manners pays court to a woman."

He pulled her to him and kissed her once more. Then without a word he slipped his arms under her and cradled her against him. He carried her across the cabin to the window, and gently seated her on its sill. Now the lightning flashed again, shining against the scar on his cheek.

He lifted her legs and twined them around his shoulders, bringing her against his mouth. A glow of sensation blossomed somewhere within her as he began to tease her gently with his tongue. She tightened her thighs around him, astonished at the swell of pleasure.

The cabin was dissolving, leaving nothing but a great, consuming sensation that was engulfing her, readying to flood her body. As she arched expectantly against him, he suddenly paused.

"Don't stop now..." She gazed at him, her vision blurred.

He smiled as he drew back. "If you want lovemaking from me, you'll have to think of somebody besides yourself. I want you to be with me, Katy Bedford. Not ahead."

He rose up and slipped away his jerkin. Then his rough, wet breeches. He toyed with her sex, bringing her wide in readiness, then he entered her quickly and forcefully.

She heard a gasp, and realized it was her own voice. It was as though she had suddenly discovered some missing part of herself. For an instant nothing else in the world existed. She clasped her legs about his waist and moved against him, returning his own intensity.

Now the sensation was coming once more, and she clung to him as she wrenched against his thighs. All at once he shoved against her powerfully, then again, and she found herself wanting to thrust her body into his, merge with him, as he lunged against her one last time. Then the lightning flared and the cabin seemed to melt into white.

After a moment of quiet, he wordlessly took her in his arms. For the first time she noticed the rain and the salt spray from the window washing over them.

"God knows the last thing I need now is a woman to think about." He smiled and kissed her. "I'd probably be wise to pitch you out to sea this minute, while I still have enough sense to do it. But I don't think I will."

"I wouldn't let you anyway. I'm not going to let you so much as move. You can just stay precisely where you are." She gripped him tighter and pulled his lips down to hers. "If anything, I should have done with you, here and now."

"Then come on. We'll go outside together." He lifted her through the open stern window, onto the quartergallery. The skies were an open flood.

She looked at him and reached to gently caress his scarred cheek. "What was that you were doing--at the first? I never knew men did such things." Her hand traveled across his chest, downward. "Do... do women ever do that too?"

He laughed. "It's not entirely unheard of in this day and age."

"Then you must show me how. I'll wager no Puritan wife does it."

"I didn't know you were a Puritan. You certainly don't make love like one."

"I'm not. I want to be as far from them as I can be." Her lips began to move down his chest.

"Then come away with me." He smoothed her wet hair. "To Jamaica."

"Jamaica?" She looked up at him in dismay. "My God, what are you saying? The Spaniards..."

"I'll manage the Spaniards." He reached down and kissed her again.

"You know, after this morning, up on the Point, I'd almost believe you." She paused and looked out at the line of warships on the horizon, dull shadows in the rain. "But nobody's going to leave here for a long time now."

"I will. And the English navy's not going to stop me." He slipped his arms around her and drew her against him. "Why not forget you're supposed to wed Anthony Walrond and come along? We're alike, you and me."

"Hugh, you know I can't leave." She slid a leg over him and pressed her thigh against his. "But at least I've got you here tonight. I think I already fancy this. So let's not squander all our fine time with a lot of talk."

Chapter Nine

"I've changed my mind. I'll not be part of it." Serina pulled at his arm and realized she was shouting to make herself heard above the torrent around them. In the west the lightning flared again. "Take me back. Now."

Directly ahead the wide thatched roof of the mill house loomed out of the darkness. Atiba seemed not to hear as he circled his arm about her waist and urged her forward. A sheet of rain off the building's eaves masked the doorway, and he drew her against him to cover her head as they passed through. Inside, the packed earthen floor was sheltered and dry.

The warmth of the room caused her misgivings to ebb momentarily; the close darkness was like a protective cloak, shielding them from the storm. Still, the thought of what lay ahead filled her with dread. The Jesuit teachers years ago in Brazil had warned you could lose your soul by joining in pagan African rituals. Though she didn't believe in the Jesuits' religion, she still feared their warning. She had never been part of a true Yoruba ceremony for the gods; she had only heard them described, and that so long ago she had forgotten almost everything.

When Atiba appeared at her window, a dark figure in the storm, and told her she must come with him, she had at first refused outright. In reply he had laughed lightly, kissed her, then whispered it was essential that she be present. He did not say why; instead he went on to declare that tonight was the perfect time. No cane was being crushed; the mill house was empty, the oxen in their stalls, the entire plantation staff ordered to quarters. Benjamin Briggs and the other branco masters were assembled in Bridgetown, holding a council of war against the Ingles ships that had appeared in the bay at sunrise.

When finally she'd relented and agreed to come, he had insisted she put on a white shift--the whitest she had--saying in a voice she scarcely recognized that tonight she must take special care with everything. Tonight she must be Yoruba.

"Surely you're not afraid of lightning and thunder?" He finally spoke as he gestured for her to sit, the false lightness still in his tone. "Don't be. It could be a sign from Shango, that he is with us. Tonight the heavens belong to him." He turned and pointed toward the mill. "Just as in this room, near this powerful iron machine of the branco, the earth is sacred to Ogun. That's why he will come tonight if we prepare a place for him."

She looked blankly at the mill. Although the rollers were brass, the rest of the heavy framework was indeed iron, the metal consecrated to Ogun. She remembered Atiba telling her that when a Yoruba swore an oath in the great palace of the Oba in Ife, he placed his hand not on a Bible but on a huge piece of iron, shaped like a tear and weighing over three hundred pounds. The very existence of Yorubaland was ensured by iron. Ogun's metal made possible swords, tipped arrows, muskets. If no iron were readily at hand, a Yoruba would swear by the earth itself, from whence came ore.

"I wish you would leave your Yoruba gods in Africa, where they belong." How, she asked herself, could she have succumbed so readily to his preto delusions? She realized now that the Yoruba were still too few, too powerless to revolt. She wanted to tell him to forget his gods, his fool's dream of rebellion and freedom.

He glanced back at her and laughed. "But our gods, our Orisa, are already here, because our people are here." He looked away, his eyes hidden in the dark, and waited for a roll of thunder to die away. The wind dropped suddenly, for an instant, and there was silence except for the drumbeat of rain. "Our gods live inside us, passed down from generation to generation. We inherit the spirit of our fathers, just as we take on their strength, their appearance. Whether we are free or slave, they will never abandon us." He touched her hand gently. "Tonight, at last, perhaps you will begin to understand."

She stared at him, relieved that the darkness hid the disbelief in her eyes. She had never seen any god, anywhere, nor had anyone else. His gods were not going to make him, or her, any less a slave to the branco. She wanted to grab his broad shoulders and shake sense into him. Tonight was the first, maybe the last, time that Briggs Hall would be theirs alone. Why had he brought her here instead, for some bizarre ceremony? Finally her frustration spilled out. "What if I told you I don't truly believe in your Ogun and your Shango and all the rest? Any more than I believe in the Christian God and all His saints?"

He lifted her face up. "But what if you experienced them yourself? Could you still deny they exist?"

"The Christians claim their God created everything in the world." Again the anger flooding over her, like the rain outside. She wanted to taunt him. "If that's true, maybe He created your gods too."

"The Christian God is nothing. Where is He? Where does He show Himself? Our Orisa create the world anew every day, rework it, change it, right before our eyes. That's how we know they are alive." His gaze softened. "You'll believe in our gods before tonight is over, I promise you."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because one of them is already living inside you. I know the signs." He stood back and examined her. "I think you are consecrated to a certain god very much like you, which is as it should be."

He reached down and picked up a cloth sack he had brought. As the lightning continued to flare through the open doorway, he began to extract several long white candles. Finally he selected one and held it up, then with an angry grunt pointed to the black rings painted around it at one-inch intervals.

"Do you recognize this? It's what the branco call a 'bidding candle.' Did you know they used candles like this on the ship? They sold a man each time the candle burned down to one of these rings. I wanted Ogun to see this tonight."

He struck a flint against a tinderbox, then lit the candle, shielding it from the wind till the wick was fully ablaze. Next he turned and stationed it on the floor near the base of the mill, where it would be protected from the gale.

She watched the tip flicker in the wind, throwing a pattern of light and shadow across his long cheek, highlighting the three small parallel scars. His eyes glistened in concentration as he dropped to his knees and retrieved a small bag from his waistband. He opened it, dipped in his hand, and brought out a fistful of white powder; then he moved to a smooth place on the floor and began to dribble the powder out of his fist, creating a series of curved patterns on the ground.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm preparing the symbol of Ogun."

"Will drawings in the dirt lure your god?"

He did not look up, merely continued to lay down the lines of white powder, letting a stream slip from his closed fist. "Take care what you say. I am consecrating this earth to Ogun. A Yoruba god will not be mocked. I have seen hunters return from an entire season in the forest empty-handed because they scorned to make offerings."

"I don't understand. The Christians say their God is in the sky. Where are these gods of Africa supposed to be?" She was trying vainly to recall the stories her mother Dara and the old babalawo of Pernambuco had told. But there was so much, especially the part about Africa, that she had willed herself to forget. "First you claim they are already inside you, and then you say they must come here from somewhere."

"Both things are true. The Orisa are in some ways like ordinary men and women." He paused and looked up. "Just as we are different, each of them is also. Shango desires justice--though wrongs must be fairly punished, he is humane. Ogun cares nothing for fairness. He demands vengeance."

"How do you know what these gods are supposed to want? You don't have any sacred books like the Christians...."

"Perhaps the Christians need their books. We don't. Our gods are not something we study, they're what we are."

"Then why call them gods?"

"Because they are a part of us we cannot reach except through them. They dwell deep inside our selves, in the spirit that all the Yoruba peoples share." He looked down and continued to lay out the drawing as he spoke. "But I can't describe it, because it lies in a part of the mind that has no words." He reached to take more of the white powder from the bag and shifted to a new position as he continued to fashion the diagram, which seemed to be the outline of some kind of bush. "You see, except for Olorun, the sky god, all our Orisa once dwelt on earth, but instead of dying they became the communal memory of our people. When we call forth one of the gods, we reach into this shared consciousness where they wait. If a god comes forth, he may for a time take over the body of one of us as his temporary habitation." He paused and looked up. "That's why I wanted you here tonight. To show you what it means to be Yoruba." He straightened and critically surveyed the drawing. His eyes revealed his satisfaction.

On the ground was a complex rendering of an African cotton tree, the representing-image of Ogun. Its trunk was flanked on each side by the outline of an elephant tusk, another symbol of the Yoruba god. He circled it for a moment, appraising it, then went to the cache of sacred utensils he had hidden behind the mill that afternoon and took up a stack of palm fronds. Carefully he laid a row along each side of the diagram.

"That's finished now. Next I'll make the symbol for Shango. It's simpler." He knelt and quickly began to lay down the outline of a double-headed axe, still using the white powder from the bag. The lines were steady, flawless. She loved the lithe, deft intensity of his body as he drew his sacred signs--nothing like the grudging branco artists who had decorated the cathedral in Pernambuco with Catholic saints, all the while half-drunk on Portuguese wine.

"Where did you learn all these figures?"

He smiled. "I've had much practice, but I was first taught by my father, years ago in Ife."

The drawing was already done. He examined it a moment, approved it, and laid aside the bag of white powder. She picked it up and took a pinch to her lips. It had the tangy bitterness of cassava flour.

"Now I'll prepare a candle for Shango." He rummaged through the pile. "But in a way it's for you too, so I'll find a pure white one, not a bidding candle."

"What do you mean, 'for me too'?"

He seemed not to hear as he lit the taper and placed it beside the symbol. Next he extracted a white kerchief from his waistband and turned to her. "I've brought something for you. A gift. Here, let me tie it." He paused to caress her, his fingertips against her cinnamon skin, then he lovingly pulled the kerchief around her head. He lifted up her long hair, still wet from the rain, and carefully coiled it under the white cloth. Finally he knotted it on top, African style. "Tonight you may discover you truly are a Yoruba woman, so it is well that you look like one."

Abruptly, above the patter of rain, came the sound of footfalls in the mud outside. She glanced around and through the dark saw the silhouettes of the Yoruba men from the slave quarters. The first three carried long bundles swathed in heavy brown wraps to protect them from the rain.

They entered single file and nodded in silence to Atiba before gathering around the diagrams on the floor to bow in reverence. After a moment, the men carrying the bundles moved to a clear space beside the mill and began to unwrap them. As the covering fell away, the fresh goatskin tops of three new drums sparkled white in the candlelight.

She watched the drummers settle into position, each nestling an instrument beneath his left arm, a curved wooden mallet in his right hand. From somewhere in her past there rose up an identical scene, years ago in Brazil, when all the Yoruba, men and women, had gathered to dance. Then as now there were three hourglass-shaped instruments, all held horizontally under the drummer's arm as they were played. The largest, the iya ilu, was almost three feet long and was held up by a wide shoulder strap, just as this one was tonight. The other two, the bata and the go-go, were progressively smaller, and neither was heavy enough to require a supporting strap.

The man holding the iya ilu tonight was Obewole, his weathered coffee face rendered darker still by the contrast of a short grey beard. His muscles were conditioned by decades of swinging a long iron sword; in the fields he could wield a cane machete as powerfully as any young warrior. He shifted the shoulder strap one last time, then held out the mallet in readiness and looked toward Atiba for a signal to begin.

When Atiba gave a nod, a powerful drum roll sounded above the roar of the gale. Then Obewole began to talk with the drum, a deep-toned invocation to the ceremonial high gods of the Yoruba pantheon, Eleggua and Olorun.

"Omi tutu a Eleggua, omi tutu a mi ileis, Olorun modu- pue..."

As the drum spoke directly to the gods, the line of men passed by Atiba and he sprinkled each with liquor from a calabash, flinging droplets from his fingertips like shooting stars in the candlelight. Each man saluted him, their babalawo, by dropping their heads to the ground in front of him while balanced on their fists, then swinging their bodies right and left, touching each side to the floor in the traditional Yoruba obeisance. The office of babalawo embodied all the struggles, the triumphs, the pride of their race.

When the last man had paid tribute, all three drums suddenly exploded with a powerful rhythm that poured out into the night and the storm. Obewole's mallet resounded against the skin of the large iya ilu, producing a deep, measured cadence--three strokes, then rest, repeated again and again hypnotically--almost as though he were knocking on the portals of the unseen. Next to him the men holding the two smaller drums interjected syncopated clicks between the iya ilu's throaty booms. The medley of tempos they blended together was driving, insistent.

As the sound swelled in intensity, the men began to circle the drawing for Ogun, ponderously shuffling from one foot to the other in time with the beat. It was more than a walk, less than a dance.

Atiba began to clang together two pieces of iron he had brought, their ring a call to Ogun. The men trudged past him, single file, the soles of their feet never leaving the earth. Using this ritual walk, they seemed to be reaching out for some mighty heart of nature, through the force of their collective strength. They had come tonight as individuals; now they were being melded into a single organic whole by the beat of the iya ilu, their spirits unified.

Some of them nodded to Obewole as they passed, a homage to his mastery, but he no longer appeared to see them. Instead he gazed into the distance, his face a mask, and methodically pounded the taut goatskin with ever increasing intensity.

"Ogun cyuba bai ye baye tonu..." Suddenly a chant rose up through the dense air, led by the young warrior Derin, who had devoted his life to Ogun. His cropped hair emphasized the strong line of his cheeks and his long, powerful neck. As he moved, now raising one shoulder then the other in time with the drums, his body began to glisten with sweat in the humid night air.

All the while, Atiba stood beside the mill, still keeping time with the pieces of iron. He nodded in silent approval as the men in the line began to revolve, their bare feet now slapping against the packed earth, arms working as though they held a bellows. This was the ritual call for Ogun, warrior and iron worker. As they whirled past the design on the floor, each man bent low, chanting, imploring Ogun to appear. While the sound soared around them, the dance went on and on, and the atmosphere of the mill house became tense with expectation.

Suddenly Derin spun away, separating himself from the line, his eyes acquiring a faraway, vacant gaze. As he passed by the musicians, the drumming swelled perceptibly, and Serina sensed a presence rising up in the room, intense and fearsome. Without warning, the clanging of iron stopped and she felt a powerful hand seize hers.

"Ogun is almost here." Atiba was pointing toward Derin, his voice a hoarse whisper. "Can you sense his spirit emerging? Soon he may try to mount Derin."

She studied the dancers, puzzling. "What do you mean, 'mount' him?"

"The Orisa can mount our mind and body, almost like a rider mounts a horse. Ogun wants to displace Derin's spirit and become the force that rules him. But Derin's self must first leave before Ogun can enter, since it's not possible to be both man and god at once. His own spirit is trying to resist, to ward off the god. Sometimes it can be terrifying to watch." He studied the men a few moments in silence. "Yes, Derin's body will be the one honored tonight. He's the youngest and strongest here; it's only natural that Ogun would choose him. Don't be surprised now by what you see. And Dara"--his voice grew stern--"you must not try to help him, no matter what may happen."

At that instant the young warrior's left leg seemed to freeze to the ground, and he pitched forward, forfeiting his centering and balance. He began to tremble convulsively, his eyes terror-stricken and unfocused, his body reeling from a progression of unseen blows against the back of his neck. He was still trying to sustain the ritual cadence as he pitched backward against the mill.

Now the drums grew louder, more forceful, and his entire body seemed to flinch with each stroke of Obewole's mallet. His eyes rolled back into his head, showing only a crescent of each pupil, while his arms flailed as though trying to push away some invisible net that had encircled his shoulders. He staggered across the floor, a long gash in his shoulder where the teeth of the mill had ripped the flesh, and began to emit barking cries, almost screams, as he struggled to regain his balance.

"You've got to stop it!" She started pulling herself to her feet. But before she could rise, Atiba seized her wrist and silently forced her down. None of the other men appeared to take notice of Derin's convulsions. Several were, in fact, themselves now beginning to stumble and lose their balance. But they all continued the solemn dance, as though determined to resist the force wanting to seize their bodies.

At that moment the measured booms of the large iya Hu drum switched to a rapid, syncopated beat, a knowing trick by Obewole intended to throw the dancers off their centering. The sudden shift in drumming caused Derin to lose the last of his control. He staggered toward the drummers, shouted something blindly, then stiffened and revolved to face Atiba.

His eyes were vacant but his sweat-drenched body had as sumed a mystical calm. He stood silent for a moment, glared fiercely about the mill house, then reached for the long iron machete Atiba was holding out for him.

"Obi meye lori emo ofe... " He was intoning in a deep, powerful voice, declaring he would now reveal who he was.

"Ogun!"

He abruptly brandished the machete about his head and with a leap landed astride the diagram Atiba had traced in the dirt.

The other men hovered back to watch as he launched a violent dance, slashing the air with the blade while intoning a singsong chant in a voice that seemed to emanate from another world. The drums were silent now, as all present knelt to him, even those older and more senior. Derin the man was no longer present; his body belonged to the god, and his absent eyes burned with a fierceness and determination Serina had never before seen.

She gripped Atiba's hand, feeling her fingers tremble. Now, more than ever, she was terrified. The pounding of rain on the roof seemed almost to beckon her out, into the night, away from all this. But then she began to understand that the men around her were no longer slaves, in the mill room of a plantation in the English Caribbees; they were Yoruba warriors, invoking the gods of their dark land.

Now Derin was finishing the ritual chant that proclaimed him the earthly manifestation of Ogun. The words had scarcely died away when Atiba stepped forward and demanded he speak to the men, offer them guidance for the days ahead. When Derin merely stood staring at him with his distant eyes, Atiba grabbed him and shook him.

Finally, above the sound of wind and rain, Derin began to shout a series of curt phrases. His voice came so rapidly, and with such unearthly force, Serina found she could not follow.

"What is he saying?" She gripped Atiba's hand tighter.

"Ogun demands we must right the wrongs that have been set upon us. That we must use our swords to regain our freedom and our pride. He declares tonight that his anger is fierce, like the burning sun that sucks dry the milk of the coconut, and he will stand with us in the name of vengeance. That victory will be ours, but only if we are willing to fight to the death, as worthy warriors."

Atiba stopped to listen as Derin continued to intone in a deep chilling voice. When he had concluded his declaration, he abruptly turned and approached Serina. He stood before her for a moment, then reached out with his left hand and seized her shoulder, tearing her white shift. She gasped at the tingle in her arm, realizing his fingers were cold and hard as iron. His eyes seemed those of a being who saw beyond the visible, into some other world. She wanted to pull away, but his gaze held her transfixed.

"Send this one back where she belongs, to the compounds of your wives. Yoruba warriors do not hold council with women. She... will lead you... to..." The voice seemed to be receding back into Derin's body now, to be calling from some faraway place.

Suddenly he leaped backward, circled the machete about his head, and with a powerful stroke thrust it into the earth, buried halfway to the hilt. He stared down for a moment in confusion, as though incredulous at what he had just done, then tremulously touched the dark wooden handle. Finally he seized his face in his hands, staggered backward, and collapsed.

Atiba sprang to catch him as he sprawled across the remains of the trampled palm fronds. Several other men came forward, their eyes anxious.

"Ogun has honored us tonight with his presence." He looked about the dark room, and all the men nodded in silent agreement.

At that moment a long trunk of lightning illuminated the open doorway, followed by a crack of thunder that shook the pole supporting the thatched roof. Serina felt a chill sweep against her forehead.

"That is the voice of Shango. He too demands to be heard. We must continue." Atiba turned to Serina. "Even though it displeases Ogun, your presence here tonight is essential. You were once consecrated to Shango. Perhaps you were never told. But you are Yoruba. Your lineage is sacred to him."

"How do you know?" She felt the chill in the room deepening.

"Shango animates your spirit. As a babalawo I can tell. It must have been divined the day you were born and sanctified by a ceremony to Olorun, the high god. There are signs, but I must not reveal to you what they are."

"No! I won't have any part of this. It's pagan, terrifying." She wrapped her arms about her, shivering from the cold. "I only came here to please you. I'll watch. But that's all."

Atiba motioned to the drummers. "But Shango will not be denied. You have nothing to fear. Most of his fire tonight is being spent in the skies." The drums began again, their cadence subtly changed from before. The lightning flashed once more, closer now, as he urged her toward the dancers.

"We must know the will of Shango, but we are all men of Ogun. Shango would never come and mount one of us. He will only come to you, his consecrated."

As the line of men encircled her and pushed her forward, into the crowd of half-naked bodies sweating in the candlelight, Atiba's face disappeared in the tumult of heaving chests and arms. She tried to yell back to him, to tell him she would never comply, but her voice was lost in the drumming and the roar of the rain.

She was moving now with the line of men. Before she realized what she was doing, she had caught the hem of her swaying white shift and begun to swing it from side to side in time with the booms of the iya ilu drum. It was a dance figure she remembered from some lost age, a joyous time long ago. She would dance for her love of Atiba, but not for his gods.

Now the rhythm of the drums grew more dizzying, as though pulling her forward. It was increasingly hard to think; only through the dance could she keep control, stay centered on her own self. Only by this arcing of her body, as the movement of her hips flowed into her swaying torso, could she...

Suddenly she saw herself, in Pernambuco, being urged gently forward by her Yoruba mother as the slaves drummed in the cool evening air. It was Sunday, and all the preto had gathered to dance, the black women in ornate Portuguese frocks of bright primary colors and the men in tight-fitting trousers. The drums were sounding and the plantation air was scented by a spray of white blossoms that drifted down from the spreading tree. The senhor de engenho was there, the white master, clapping and leering and calling something to Dara about her mulata daughter's new frock. He was watching her now, waiting. Soon, very soon, he would take her.

Lightning flashed again, and she felt its warmth against her icy skin. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to stay in that world of faraway whose warmth beckoned. But now she felt her own will beginning to ebb. Something was happening....

"No! Please, no!" She forced her long fingernails into her palm, and the pain seemed to restore some of the awareness she had felt slipping from her. Desperately she tore herself away from the dance and seized the center post of the mill, gasping for air and digging her nails into the wood until she felt one snap. Then she pulled away the African kerchief and threw back her head, swirling her hair about her face till it caught in her mouth. All at once she was thirsty, hungry, yearning for a dark presence that hovered over her body like a lover.

Again the blossoms of Pernambuco drifted down, tiny points of fire as they settled against her face, and she began to hum a simple Portuguese song she had known as a child. It was spring in Brazil, and as she looked up she saw the face of the old Yoruba babalawo.

"Dara, come." He was reaching toward her, beckoning her away from the Portuguese master, saying something about Shango she did not understand, and the sight of his sad eyes and high black cheeks filled her with love. But now there was a youthfulness in his face, as though he were here and powerful and young. Her old babalawo had come back: there was the same glistening black skin, the same three face-marks cut down his cheek, the powerful eyes she had somehow forgotten over the years.

She gasped as he pulled her back into the circle of dancers.

He was Atiba. His clan-marks were Atiba's. And so was his voice...

Lightning illuminated the doorway and its whiteness washed over her, bleaching away the mill, the moving bodies, the face of Atiba. As she stumbled back among the dancers, her mind seemed to be thinning, turning to pale mist, merging with the rain.

' 'Boguo yguoro ache semilenu Shango..." The men were moving beside her now, intoning their singsong chant. She suddenly recalled the long-forgotten Yoruba verses and wanted to join in, but the words floated away. She was no longer part of the men in the room; she was distant, observing from some other world. Instead of the sweating bodies, there was the fragrance of frangipani and the faces of preto slaves on the Pernambuco plantation as they gathered around at the moment of her birth to praise her light skin. Dara's warm, nourishing breast was against her lips, and the world was bright and new.

She gasped for breath, but the air was wet, oppressive. Its heaviness was descending over her, then her left leg seemed to catch in a vise, as though it belonged to the deep earth. She wrenched her body to look down, and felt a crack of thunder pound against her back. The world was drifting up through her, drowning her in white....

... She is floating, borne by the drums, while a weight has settled against her back, a stifling weariness that insists the dance must stop. Yet some power propels her on, swirls about her, forces her forward. She senses the touch of wet skin as she falls against one of the dancers, but no hands reach out to help. Only the drums keep her alive. But they too are fading, leaving her, as the world starts to move in slow motion. A white void has replaced her mind. Her breath comes in short bursts, her heart pounds, her hands and feet are like ice. She is ready now to leave, to surrender, to be taken. Then a voice comes, a voice only she can hear, whose Yoruba words say her mind can rest. That her body is no longer to struggle. She holds her eyes open, but she no longer sees. A powerful whiteness has settled against her forehead....

' 'Okunrin t 'o lagbara!'' A hard voice cut through the room, silencing the drums. "Shango!"

The Yoruba men fell forward to touch the feet of the tall mulata who towered over them, demanding worship. Her eyes glowed white, illuminating the darkness of the room; her arm stretched out toward Atiba as she called for her scepter.

He hesitated a moment, as though stunned that she was no longer Dara, then rose to hand her a large stone that had been chipped into the form of a double-headed axe. He had fashioned it himself, in anticipation of just this moment. As he offered the sacred implement, her left hand shot out and seized his throat. She grabbed the axe head with her right hand and examined it critically. Then she roughly cast him aside, against the mill. While the men watched, she raised the stone axe above her head and began to speak.

"Opolopo ise I'o wa ti enikan ko le da se afi bi o ba ir oluranlowo...."

The voice of Shango was telling them that the Yoruba must join with the other men of Africa if they would not all die as slaves. Otherwise they and their children and their children's children for twenty generations would be as cattle to the branco. Even so, he would not yet countenance the spilling of innocent blood. Not until Yoruba blood had been spilled. They must not kill those among the branco who had done them no hurt. Only those who would deny their manhood.

Suddenly she turned and glared directly at Atiba. The voice grew even harsher.

"Atiba, son of Balogun, bi owo eni ko te eku ida a ki ibere iku ti o pa baba eni!"

It was the ancient call to arms of Ife: "No man who has not grasped his sword can avenge the death of his father." But Atiba sensed there was a deeper, more personal message. The voice had now become that of Balogun himself, clearly, unmistakably. He felt his heart surge with shame.

Her last words were still ringing when a sphere of lightning slid down the centerpole of the roof and exploded against the iron mill. Rings of fire danced across the rollers and dense dark smoke billowed in the room. Atiba had already sprung to catch her as she slumped forward, sending her stone axe clattering across the packed floor.

' 'Olorun ayuba bai ye baye tonu..." Through the smoke he quickly began to intone a solemn acknowledgement to the Yoruba high god. Then he lifted her into his arms and pressed his cheek against hers as he led the men out.

She was only dimly aware of a whisper against her ear. "You are truly a woman of the Yoruba, and tonight you have brought us Shango's power. With him to help us, we will one day soon plant our yams where the branco's compounds stand."

As they started down the pathway, single file, the lightning had gone. Now there was only the gentle spatter of Caribbean rain against their sweating faces as they merged with the night.

Chapter Ten

As the bell on the Rainbowe struck the beginning of the first watch, Edmond Calvert stood on the quarterdeck studying the thin cup of crescent moon that hung suspended in the west. In another hour it would be gone and the dense tropical dark would descend. The time had arrived to commence the operation.

He reflected grimly on how it had come to this. The ultimate responsibility, he knew, must be laid at the door of a greedy Parliament. Before the monarchy was abolished, the American settlements had been the personal domain of the king, and they had suffered little interference from Commons. Scarce wonder Parliament's execution of Charles was received with so much trepidation and anger here--yesterday he'd heard that in Virginia the Assembly had just voted to hang anyone heard defending the recent "traitorous proceedings" in England. What these Americans feared, naturally enough, was that Parliament would move to try and take them over. They were right. And the richest prize of all was not Virginia, not Massachusetts, but the sugar island of Barbados. Why else had he been sent here first?

How could Oliver Cromwell have so misjudged these colonists? He thought all they needed was intimidation, and expected the fleet to manage that handily. What he'd failed to understand was the strong streak of independence that had developed here over the years, especially in Barbados. Instead of acting sensibly, the islanders had met the fleet with a cannon barrage and a Declaration stating that they would fight to the death for their liberty. What was worse, they had steadfastly refused to budge.

Even so, he had tried every means possible to negotiate a surrender. He'd started a propaganda campaign, sending ashore letters and posters warning that resistance was foolhardy, that they needed the protection of England. But Dalby Bedford's reply was to demand that the island be allowed to continue governing itself by its own elected Assembly, when everyone knew Parliament would never agree. Yet for a fortnight they had continued their fruitless exchange of letters, cajolery, threats--neither side willing to relent.

What else, he asked himself, was left to do now? Add to that, invasion fever was becoming rife in the fleet. This morning he had hung out the Flag of Council, summoning the captains of all the ships aboard the Rainbowe for a final parlay, and over a luncheon table groaning with meat and drink from the fourteen captured Dutch merchant fluyts, the men had done little else save brag of victory. Finally, his last hope of avoiding bloodshed gone, he had reluctantly issued orders. It had come to this--England and her most populous American colony were going to war.

He then spent the afternoon watch on the quarterdeck, alone, pensively studying the flying fish that glided across the surface of the tranquil blue Caribbean. Hardest to repress was his own anguish at the prospect of sending English infantry against a settlement in the Americas. These New World venturers were not rebel Papist Irishmen, against whom Cromwell might well be justified in dispatching his army. They were fellow Protestants.

As he turned and ordered the anchor weighed, he experienced yet another disquieting reflection--unless there was some weakness in the island he did not yet know, it could win.

"Are we ready to issue muskets now, and bandoliers of powder and shot?" Vice Admiral James Powlett was coming up the companionway with a purposeful stride.

He heard Powlett's question and decided to pass the decision on issuing of arms to the invasion commander, Colonel Richard Morris, now waiting beside him wearing breastplate and helmet.

Deep wrinkles from fifty years of life were set in Morris' brow, and the descending dark did not entirely obscure the worry in his blue eyes or the occasional nervous twitch in his Dutch-style goatee. A seasoned army officer, he had chafed for days waiting to take his men ashore. On board the ships, he and his infantry were under naval command. On land, he would be in total charge. His impatience could not have been greater.

During the forenoon watch he had personally visited each of the troop ships and picked some two hundred of the fittest infantry for the invasion. He had organized them into attack squadrons, appointed field commanders, and held a briefing for the officers. Then the men had been transferred in equal numbers to the Rainbowe, the Marston Moor, and the Gloucester, where the captains had immediately ordered them down to the already-crowded gun decks to await nightfall.

"We'll issue no arms till it's closer to time." Morris squinted at Powlett through the waning moonlight. "I'll not have some recruit light a matchcord in the dark down there between decks and maybe set off a powder keg. Though I'd scarcely fault any man who did, considering the conditions you've placed my infantry under."

"In truth, sir, I think we're all a trifle weary of hearing your complaints about how the navy has been required to garrison your men." Powlett scowled. "May I remind you that while you've seen fit to occupy yourself grumbling, the navy has arranged to replenish our water and provisions, courtesy of all the Butterboxes who were anchored in the bay. In fact, I only just this afternoon finished inventorying the last Dutch fluyt and securing her hatches."

Powlett paused to watch as the Rainbowe began to come about, her bow turning north. She would lead the way along the coast, the other two warships following astern and steering by a single lantern hanging from her maintopmast. Their destination was the small bay off the settlement at Jamestown, up the coast from Carlisle Bay.

"What this navy has done, sir," Morris' voice was rising, "is to seize and pilfer the merchantmen of a nation England has not declared war on."

"We don't need Letters of Marque to clear our American settlements of these Dutchmen," Powlett continued. "They've grown so insolent and presumptuous they're not to be suffered more. If we don't put a stop to them, they'll soon make claim to all the Americas, so that no nation can trade here but themselves. Besides, it's thanks to these interloping Hollanders that we've now got fresh water and meat enough to last for weeks."

"Aye, so I'm told, though my men have yet to see a sliver of this Dutch meat we hear about."

"There's been time needed to inventory, sir. I've had the beef we took cut into quarter pieces and pickled and put aboard the provision ships. And the pork and mutton cut into half pieces and salted. We've got enough in hand now to sit and watch this island starve, if it comes to that."

Morris chewed on his lip and thought bitterly of the noonday Council of War called aboard the Rainbowe. All the fleet captains had gorged themselves on fresh pork and fat mutton, washing it down with fine brandy and sack--all taken from the captain's larder of the Kostverloren. "The treatment of my men on this voyage has been nothing short of a crime." He continued angrily, "It cries to heaven, I swear it."

The infantrymen had been confined to the hold for the entire trip, on dungeonlike gun decks illuminated by only a few dim candles. Since naval vessels required a far larger crew than merchant ships, owing to the men needed for the gun crews, there was actually less space for extra personnel than an ordinary merchantman would have afforded. A frigate the size of the Rainbowe already had two watches of approximately thirty men each, together with twenty-five or more specialists--carpenters, cooks, gunnery mates. How, Morris wondered, could they expect anything save sickness and misery on a ship when they took aboard an additional hundred or two hundred landsmen sure to be seasick for the whole of the voyage? Need anyone be surprised when his soldiers were soon lying in their own vomit, surrounded by sloshing buckets of excrement and too sick to make their way to the head up by the bowsprit, where the seamen squatted to relieve themselves. Scarce wonder more men died every day.

"What's your latest estimate of their strength here on this side of the island?" Morris turned back to Powlett, trying to ignore the stench that wafted up out of the scuttles. "Assuming the intelligence you've been getting is worth anything."

"I can do without your tone, sir," the vice admiral snapped. "We have it on authority that the rebels have managed to raise some six thousand foot and four hundred horse. But their militia's strung out the length of the coast. Any place we make a landing--unless it's bungled--we should have the advantage of surprise and numbers. All you have to do is storm the breastwork and spike their ordnance. It should be a passing easy night's work."

"Nothing's easy. The trick'll be to land the men before they can alert the entire island." Morris turned back to Calvert. "I'll need flintlocks for the first wave, not matchlocks, if we're to have the benefit of surprise. And I've got a feeling we'll need every advantage we can muster."

"We can manage that easily enough. I'd guess we've got nearly two hundred flintlocks. And about six hundred matchlocks. So I can issue every man you have a musket and pike, and a bandolier with twelve rounds of powder and shot. As well as six yards of matchcord for the matchlocks."

"So what you're saying is, we've got mostly matchlocks?" Morris' voice was grim.

"That's all their militia'll have, depend on it."

That was doubtless true, Morris told himself. It would be an oldstyle war, but plenty deadly, for it all.

From the time some two centuries earlier when the musket came into general use, the most common means for firing had been to ignite a small amount of powder in an external container, the "powder pan," which then directed a flash through a tiny hole in the side of the barrel, igniting the powder of the main charge. The powder pan of a matchlock was set off using a burning "matchcord," a powder-impregnated length of cotton twine kept lit in readiness for firing the gun. The technique differed very little from the way a cannon was fired. A smoldering end of the matchcord was attached to the hammer or "cock" of the gun, which shoved it into the powder pan whenever the trigger was pulled. An infantryman using a matchlock musket carried several yards of matchcord, prudently burning at both ends. Matchlocks were cheap and simple and the mainstay of regular infantry throughout Europe.

There was, however, an improved type of firing mechanism recently come into use, called the flintlock, much preferred by sportsmen and anyone wealthy enough to afford it. The flintlock musket ignited the powder in the external pan by striking flint against steel when the trigger was pulled, and it was a concealable weapon which could also be used in rainy weather, since it did not require a burning cord. A flintlock cost three or four times as much as a matchlock and required almost constant maintenance by a skilled gunsmith. Morris suspected that whereas a few of the rich royalist exiles on Barbados might own flintlocks, most of the poorer planters probably had nothing more than cheap matchlocks.

"We'd also be advised to off-load some provisions once we get ashore, in case we get pinned down." Morris looked coldly at Powlett. "I'm thinking a few quarters of that pickled beef you took from the Dutchmen wouldn't be amiss."

"In time, sir. For now I can let you have twenty hogsheads of water, and I'll set ashore some salt pork from our regular stores."

"What if I offered to trade all that for just a few kegs of brandy?" Morris appealed to Calvert. "I warrant the men'd sooner have it."

Calvert glanced at Powlett, knowing the vice admiral had hinted at their noonday Council he preferred keeping all the Dutch brandy for the navy's men. "I'd say we can spare you a couple of kegs. It should be enough for a day or two's supply. But I'll not send it ashore till the breastwork is fully secured...."

Now the Rainbowe was entering the outer perimeter of the small bay at Jamestown, and the admiral excused himself to begin giving orders for reefing the mainsail. Through the dark they could see the outline of the torch-lit breastwork, a low brick fortress outlined against the palms.

It's all but certain to be bristling with ordnance, Morris thought. And what if their militia's waiting for us somewhere in those damned trees? How many men will I lose before daylight?

He inhaled the humid night air, then turned to Powlett. "We should start bringing the men up on deck. We've got to launch the longboats as soon as we drop anchor. Before the militia in the breastwork has time to summon reinforcements."

Powlett nodded and passed the order to the quartermaster. "Then I'll unlock the fo'c'sle, so we can begin issuing muskets and bandoliers."

The infantrymen emerged from the hold in companies, each led by an officer. The general mismatch of body armor, the "breast" and "back," bespoke what a ragtag army it was. Also, the helmets, or "pots," for those fortunate enough to have one, were a mixture of all the age had produced: some with flat brims, some that curled upward front and back. Some were too large for their wearers, others too small. Doublets too were a rainbow of colors, many with old-fashioned ruffs--taken from dead or captured royalists during the Civil War--and the rest plain and patched with rough country cloth.

The night perfume of the tropical shore and the sea was obliterated by the stench of the emerging soldiers. Their faces were smeared with soot from the beams of the gun decks where they had been quartered, and they smelled strongly of sweat and the rankness of the hold. As they set grimly to work readying their weapons, a row of longboats along midships was unlashed and quietly lowered over the side. The two other warships, which had anchored astern of the Rainbowe, also began launching their invasion craft. Kegs of water, salt pork, and black powder were assembled on deck and readied to be landed after the first wave of the assault.

The guns of the warships were already primed and run out, set to provide artillery support if necessary when the longboats neared the beach. But with luck the breastwork could be overrun and its gun emplacements seized before the militia had a chance to set and fire its ordnance. Once the Jamestown fortress was disabled, there would be a permanent breach in the island's defenses, a chink not easily repaired.

The longboats had all been lowered now, and they bobbed in a line along the port side of the Rainbowe. Next, rope ladders were dropped and the infantrymen ordered to form ranks at the gunwales. Those assigned to lead the attack, all armed with flintlocks, were ordered over the side first. They dropped down the dangling ladders one by one, grumbling to mask their fear. The second wave, men with matchlocks, were being issued lighted matchcord, which they now stood coiling about their waists as they waited to disembark.

Edmond Calvert watched silently from the quarterdeck, heartsick. With them went his last hope for negotiation. Now it was a state of war, England against her own settlements in the New World.

"Katy, all I'm trying to say is you'll jeopardize your chances for a proper marriage if this goes on much more. I only hope you have some idea of what you're about." Dalby Bedford leaned back in his chair and studied the head of his cane, troubled by his conflicting emotions. The night sounds from the compound outside, crickets and whistling frogs, filtered in through the closed jalousies.

He loved his daughter more than life itself. What's more, he had vowed long ago never to treat her as a child. And now... now that she no longer was a child, what to do? It was too late to dictate to her; the time for that was years ago. She was a woman now--she was no longer his little girl. She was no longer his.

They'd always been best of friends. In the evenings they'd often meet in the forecourt of the compound, where, after she was old enough to understand such things, they would laugh over the latest gossip from London: what pompous Lord had been cuckolded, whose mistress had caused a scene at court. He had never thought to warn her that, as a woman, she might someday have desires of her own.

But now, he was still her father, still worried over her, still wanted the right thing for her... and she was throwing away her best chance to secure a fine marriage--all for the company of a man whose rough manner he could not help but despise, however much he might respect his courage and talent.

Hugh Winston was the antithesis of everything Dalby Bedford stood for: he was impulsive, contemptuous of law and order. How could Katy be attracted to him, be so imprudent? Had she learned nothing in all their years together?

Dalby Bedford found himself puzzled, disturbed, and--yes, he had to admit it--a trifle jealous.

"Katy, you know I've never tried to interfere in what you choose to do, but in truth I must tell you I'm troubled about this Winston. Your carousing about with a smuggler is hardly demeanor fitting our position here. I fear it's already been cause for talk."

She set down the leather bridle she was mending and lifted her eyes, sensing his discomfort. "You'd suppose there were more important things for the island to talk about, especially now."

"What happens to you is important to me; I should hope it's important to you as well, young woman."

She straightened her skirt, and the edge of her crinoline petticoat glistened in the candlelight. "Hugh's a 'smuggler' when I'm out with him, but he's 'Captain Winston' when the militia needs a batch of raw ten-acre freeholders drilled in how to form ranks and prime a musket. I thought it was 'Captain Winston,' and not a 'smuggler' who's been working night and day helping keep trained gunners manning all the breastworks along the coast."

"There's no arguing with you, Katy. I gave that up long ago. I'm just telling you to mind yourself." He swabbed his brow against the heat of early evening and rose to open the jalousies. A light breeze whispered through the room and fluttered the curtains. "I'll grant you he's been a help to us, for all his want of breeding. But what do you know about him? No man who lives the way he does can be thought a gentleman. You've been out riding with him half a dozen times, once all the way over to the breastwork at Oistins. In fact, you must have passed right by the Walrond plantation. It's not gone unnoticed, you can be sure."

He settled back into his chair with a sigh and laid aside his cane. These last few days he had realized more than ever how much he depended on Katherine. "Anthony Walrond's a man of the world, but you can't push him too far. I'm just telling you to try and be discreet. In faith, my greater worry is that... that I'd sooner you were here with me more now. Between us, I think the fleet's going to try and invade soon. If not tonight, then tomorrow or the day after for certain. Talk has run its course. And if we've got to fight the English army on our own beaches, God help us."

He could sense the unity on the island dissolving. Many of the smaller planters were growing fearful, and morale in the militia was visibly deteriorating. Half the men would just as soon have done with the constant alerts and dwindling supplies. There was scarcely any meat to be had now, and flour was increasingly being hoarded and rationed. Cassava bread was finding its way onto the tables of English planters who a fortnight earlier would have deemed it fit only for indentures--while the indentures themselves, God knows, were being fed even less than usual. Without the steady delivery of provisions by the Dutch shippers, there probably would be starvation on Barbados inside a month. And with all the new Africans on the island, many militiamen were reluctant to leave their own homes unprotected. Little wonder so many of the smaller freeholders were openly talking about surrender.

"Katy, I hate to ask this, but I do wish you'd stay here in the compound from now on. It's sure to be safer than riding about the island, no matter who you're with."

"I thought I was of age. And therefore free to come and go as I wish."

"Aye, that you are. You're twenty-three and twice as stubborn as your mother ever was. I just don't want to lose you too, the way I lost her." He looked at her, his eyes warm with concern. "Sometimes you seem so much like her. Only I think she truly loved Bermuda. Which I'll warrant you never really did."

"It always seemed so tame." She knew how much he cherished those few years of happiness, before his long stretch of widowerhood in Barbados. "There's a wildness and a mystery about this island I never felt there."

"Aye, you were of your own opinion, even then. But still

I've always been regretful I agreed to take this post." He paused and his look darkened. "Especially considering what happened on the trip down. If only I'd taken your mother below decks when the firing began, she'd still be with us."

"But she wanted to see the canoes." She picked up the bridle again. "I did too."

"Well, you've been a comfort to a dull old man--no, don't try and deny it--more than any father has a right to expect, I suppose. You became a woman that day your mother died, no question of it." The sparkle returned to his eyes. "You'd never do anything I told you after that. May God curse you with a daughter of your own someday, Katy Bedford. Then you'll know what it's like."

At that moment she wanted nothing so much as to slip her arms around his neck and tell him she would be his dutiful daughter forever. But she was no longer sure it was true.

"Now admit it to me, Katy. This is no time for pretense. You're smitten with this Winston, aren't you? I can see the change in you." He watched as she busied herself with the bridle, trying not to look surprised. "I realize you're a woman now. I suppose I can understand how a man like him might appeal to you. And I guess there's nothing wrong with having a bit of a dalliance. God knows it's fashionable in London these days. But your Winston's a curious fellow, and there're doubtless a lot of things about him neither of us knows." He looked at her. "I'm sure your mother wouldn't have approved, any more than I do."

"What does she have to do with this?" She knew he always invoked her mother's alleged old-fashioned views any time he couldn't think of a better argument.

"Perhaps you're right. What you do now is on my head, not hers." He paused, not wanting to meet her eyes. "I'll grant you I might have sowed a few wild oats myself, when I was your age. And I can't say I've entirely regretted it. The fact is, as I get older that's one of the few things from my early years I remember at all. After a while, all other memories fade." His voice drifted away. "And now, the way things have come to pass, these days may be the last either of us has left to..." He raised his hand suddenly, as though to silence himself. From down the hill came the faint crack of a musket, then another and another. Three shots.

They both waited, listening in the dim candlelight as the night sounds of crickets and frogs resumed once more. Finally he spoke.

"Well, there it is."

She rose and walked over behind his chair. She hesitated for a moment, then slipped her arms around his neck and nuzzled her cheek against his. There were so many things shed wanted to say to him over the years. Now suddenly it was almost too late, and still she couldn't find the words. She wanted to hold him now, but something still stopped her.

Silently he touched her hand, then reached for his cane and stood. "I've ordered the carriage horses kept harnessed, in case." He was already halfway to the door. "I suppose I'd best go down to the Point first, just to be sure."

"I want to go with you." She grabbed the bridle and ran after him. To let him get away, with so much still unsaid....

"No, you'll stay here, and for once that's an order." He took her hand and squeezed it. "I didn't tell you that five members of the Assembly have already called for surrender. Five out of twenty-two. I wonder how many more'll be ready to join them after tonight. If the Assembly votes to give in, Katy, you know it'll probably mean a trial in London for me." He kissed her on the cheek. "You'll have to look out for yourself then, and that'll be time aplenty to go chasing around the island in the dark." He drew back. "In the meantime, you'd best decide what you plan to do about this Winston fellow if that happens. Don't go losing your heart to him. He's a rogue who'll not do the right thing by you. Or any woman. Mark it. A father still can see a few things. He's already got one woman, that ship of his, and a seaman like that never has room for anyone else."

She had to concede that, in truth, there was something to what he said. Up till now shed been managing to keep things in balance. But was she starting to let desire overrule that better judgment? For the hundredth time she warned herself to keep her head.

"In the first place I don't wish to marry Hugh Winston. So it's just as well, isn't it, that he's got his ship. I see all too well what he is. I'm going to marry Anthony, and try and make the best of things." Her eyes hardened. "And secondly, we're not going to lose. You just have to delay the Assembly from voting a surrender. Hugh thinks the militia can drive them back."

"Aye, we may hold out for a time. We've got trained gunners for every breastwork on the west and south coasts. But how long before some of the militia starts defecting? Then what can we do? With guns at our backs as well..." He exhaled pensively. "By the way, on the subject of Winston, I've noticed something a trifle incongruous about that man. He appears to know a lot more about cannon and fortifications than a seaman reasonably ought, probably as much or more even than Anthony Walrond. Has he ever said where he learned it?"

"He never talks much about his past." She had found herself increasingly puzzled, and not a little infuriated, by Winston's secretiveness. Probably the only woman he ever confided in was Joan Fuller. "But sometimes I get the idea he may have learned a lot of what he knows from a Frenchman. Now and then he slips and uses a French name for something. I'd almost guess he helped a band of Frenchmen set up defenses somewhere in the Caribbean once."

Dalby Bedford quietly sucked in his breath and tried to mask his dismay. The only "band of Frenchmen" to fit that description would be the little settlement of planters on the French side of St. Christopher, or the Cow-Killers on Tortuga. And Hugh Winston hardly looked like a planter.

"Well, maybe it's just as well we don't know, Katy." He reached for his hat. "Now mind yourself, and make sure all the servants have muskets. Don't open the door to anyone." He pecked her quickly on the cheek. "Just be glad your friend Winston's frigate is aground. His 'other woman' is beached for now; try and keep her that way."

Suddenly James, their stooping, white-haired Irish servant pushed through the doorway from the paneled entry foyer. The night breeze set the candles flickering. "Excellency!" He bowed nervously. "Pardon me, Excellency. There's a... gentleman to see you. He just rode into the compound all in a sweat. Claims he's come up from Mistress Fuller's place."

The Assembly had voted to place Hugh Winston in command of the gunnery crews for the cannon emplacements at the four major breastworks along the coast: Lookout Point, Bridgetown, and Jamestown on the west; and Oistins Bay, on the south. In line with that responsibility, he had taken the front room of Joan's tavern and converted it into a meeting place for his gunnery officers. Several of Joan's rickety pine tables had been lashed together to form a desk; from that makeshift post he assigned the daily watches for each of the breastworks and monitored supplies. He also maintained close communication with the commanders of the field militia, both infantry and cavalry, who were drawn from the ranking planters and royalist officers in each parish. The militia itself had individual field command posts in each of the parish churches.

The tavern was a comfortable rendezvous place for the men assigned to the guns, mostly seamen or former seamen who had gained their experience with heavy ordnance on a gun deck. Joan's familiar clapboard establishment enjoyed a commanding view of the harbor, and, unlike the parish churches, offered the finest food and grog remaining on the island. Joan presided over the accommodations, making sure necessary amenities were always at hand. She also kept a close eye on the loyalties of those who gathered.

Tonight, however, the tavern was all but empty save for Winston, his quartermaster John Mewes and his master's mate Edwin Spurre, since all gunnery mates were on alert and at their posts at the various breastworks along the coast. The three of them were waiting for the signal, horses saddled and ready.

The night was clear and humid, and a light breeze had just sprung up in the south. Winston leaned against the doorjamb, half in and half out, exhausted from a day-long ride reviewing gun emplacements along the shore. John Mewes was stationed outside on the porch, tankard in hand, keeping an eye on the sentry post atop Lookout Point. A system of lantern signals had been arranged to alert the Bridgetown command post to any change in the disposition of the fleet.

"I've got a feelin' about tonight, Cap'n. Word from up on the Point at midday was they were holdin' a big meetin' aboard the Rainbowe. An' then she got underway and made about a league out to sea, along with the troop ships." Mewes took a nervous puff from the long stem of his white clay pipe. "I'd say it's odds they're planning a little surprise for us tonight. More'n likely somewhere along the west coast."

"I've got the same feeling, John." He strolled across the narrow porch and stared up the hill, toward the sentry post stationed at the north end of the Point. "What was the latest signal?"

"Same as usual. Five flashes on the quarter hour, meanin' no sightings." Mewes reached to tap his pipe against the heavy beam at the corner of the building. "I told tonight's watch to report anything that moved. But they'll be hard pressed to see much beyond the bay here."

"Then you stay lively too. And try not to get too thirsty." Winston lifted a flintlock musket he had brought ashore from the Defiance and tested the lock by the light of a candle lantern. Next he started polishing the barrel with a cloth he had borrowed from Joan. "I've got an idea they may try and land up at Jamestown, or maybe even farther north."

"Then hadn't we best advise the militia commanders to double the security on the breastwork up that way?"

"I spoke with Walrond, up at Jamestown, late this afternoon. We both figure that's the most likely location. He's already ordered up reinforcements for tonight." He drew a musket patch from his pocket and began to clean the sooty powder pan of the musket.

"I didn't see any militia moving out from around here."

"Nobody was to move till dark. We don't want the fleet's Puritan spies here to know we're ready. We'd lose our chance to catch their infantry in a noose."

"Betwixt you an' me, I'd just as soon they never got around to landing infantry." Mewes shifted up his trousers. "A man could well get his balls shot off amidst all that musket fire."

Winston pulled back the hammer of the musket, checking its tension. "Sometimes I wonder why the hell I keep you on, John. I'd wager most of Joan's girls have more spirit for a fight."

"Aye, I'd sooner do my battlin' on a feather mattress, I'll own it. So the better question is why I stay on under your command."

"Could be the fine caliber of men you're privileged to ship with."

"Aye, that crew of gallows-bait are a rare species of gentility, as I'm a Christian." He started to laugh, then it died in his throat. "God's wounds, was that a signal up at the point?"

"Looked to be." Winston flipped over the musket and examined the barrel. Then he selected a "charge holder"--a tiny metal flask--from among the twelve strung from the bandolier draped over his shoulder and began pouring its black powder into the muzzle. "Three longs and a short. That means a mast lantern putting in at Jamestown, right?" He fitted a patch over the ramrod and began to tamp in the powder. "Probably the Rainbowe. "

"Aye, that's the signal." Mewes shoved the pipe into his pocket. "Want me to fetch the muskets?"

"Tell Joan to give you those two leaning in the corner, at the back. I just got through priming them."

Mewes vaulted the steps leading to the open tavern door. Seconds later, Joan appeared, holding the two flintlocks.

"What is it, darlin'?" Her eyes were bloodshot with fatigue. "Are we finally due for some company?"

"Right on schedule. The surf's been down all day. I figured they'd try it tonight." He finished tapping the ball down the muzzle of the musket, then placed the gun carefully on the step. "I guess that means I win our wager."

"God's blood, I never thought it'd come to this. I was sure they'd never have the brass to try it." She passed him the muskets. "So we'll be going to war after all. I'd wager you another shilling you'll not hold them off, darlin', save there'd be no way to collect if I won."

"All wagers are off now. This one's too hard to call." He handed one of the flintlocks to John Mewes, then cocked the other and aimed it into the dark night air. "Ready, John?"

"Aye." Mewes cocked the musket and aimed it at the sliver of moon on the western horizon. "Tell me again. The signal for Jamestown's one shot, a count of five, another shot, a count of ten, and then the third?"

"That's it."

"Fire when ready."

Winston squeezed the trigger and the powder pan flashed in the dark. Five seconds later Mewes discharged the second musket, then after ten seconds Winston fired the third, the one he had just loaded.

"All right, John. Get the horses."

"Aye." Mewes disappeared around the side of the tavern, headed for the makeshift stable located at the rear.

Approximately a minute later the signal of three musket shots was repeated by militiamen in the field command post at Black Rock, on the road to Jamestown. Shortly after there again came a faint repetition of the pattern of shots, farther north. The prearranged signal was moving quickly up the coast.

Mewes emerged from the dark leading two speckled mares. He patted one on the side of her face, muttered an endearment, then passed the reins to Winston. "I'm ready to ride."

"All right, John, I'll see you at Jamestown. Put Spurre in charge here and go up to the governor's compound to tell Bedford. If he's not there, then try the Assembly Room. If they're meeting tonight, tell them to adjourn and get every man up to Jamestown, on the double. We may need them all."

Mewes bellowed instructions through the doorway. Then he seized the saddle horn of the smaller horse and pulled himself up. "Aye. I'll be up there myself soon as I can manage, depend on it."

Joan stood beside Winston, watching as he vanished into the dark. "Well now, that's most curious." She cocked back her head and her eyes snapped in the lantern light. "I'm surprised you'd not take the opportunity to go up to His Excellency's compound yourself. Seein' you're so well acquainted with the family these days."

"All in the line of duty."

"Duty my arse, you whoremaster. But you'll get what you deserve from that one, on my honor. She thinks she's royalty itself." She held the reins while he mounted. "Don't say I didn't give you a friendly warning."

"I'm warned." He vaulted into the saddle as Edwin Spurre emerged through the doorway to assume lookout duty. "Edwin, prime and ready the muskets. In case they try to attack on two fronts. Do you know the signals?"

"Aye, Cap'n." Joan handed up the reins. "Godspeed. You know if you let those Puritan hypocrites take over the island, there'll be a lot of wives thinkin' they can finally close me down. Just because they've got nothing better to fret about."

"We'll win." He looked at Joan a moment and reached out to take her hand. Tonight he felt almost like he was defending the only home he had left. Now he had no ship, and Jamaica seemed farther away than ever.

He leaned over in the saddle and kissed her. She ran her arms around his neck, then drew back and pinched his cheek. "Show those Roundhead bastards a thing or two about how to shoot, love. I'm counting on you, though damned if I know why."

"Just keep the grog under lock and key till I get back." He waved lightly, then reined the mare toward the road north.

As the horse clattered across the loose boards of the bridge, he glanced over his shoulder, up the hill toward the compound. What'll happen to Bedford and Katy, he wondered to himself, if we can't hold off the attack? It'll be the Tower and a trial for him, not a doubt. Probably charged with leading a rebellion. And what about her...?

More riders were joining him now, militiamen who had been waiting for the signal. The distance to Jamestown was several miles, and they were all riding hard. None spoke, other than a simple greeting, each man thinking of the stakes. No one wanted to contemplate what would happen should they lose.

We'll win, he kept telling himself as he spurred his mare. By God, we have to.

Chapter Eleven

Jeremy Walrond slid his hand down the long steel barrel of the flintlock, letting his fingers play across the Latin motto engraved along the top, Ante ferit quam flamma micet. "It strikes before the flash is seen."

The piece had been given to him on his twelfth birthday by his brother Anthony, and it was superb--crafted in Holland, with a fine Flemish lock and carved ivory insets of hunting scenes in the stock. With it he had once, in a stroke of rare luck, brought down a partridge in flight. Now through a dismaying and improbable chain of events he must turn this work of artistry against a fellow human being.

It was true he had been part of the royalist cause in the Civil War, a clerk helping direct the transport of supplies, but he had never been near enough to the lines to fire a musket. Or to have a musket fired at him. The thought of battle brought a moistness to his palms and a dull, hollow ache in his gut.

While the men around him in the trench--all now under his command--reinforced their courage with a large onion-flask of homemade kill-devil, he gazed over the newly mounded earth and out to sea, ashamed at his relief there was as yet no flash of lantern, no telltale red dots of burning matchcord.

The only moving lights were the darting trails of fireflies, those strange night creatures that so terrified newcomers to the Caribbees. In a few more moments the last of the moon, now a thin lantern, would drop beneath the western horizon, causing the coast and the sea to be swallowed in blackness. After that happened, he told himself, he might see nothing more, hear nothing more, till the first musket ball slammed home.

War, he meditated, was man's greatest folly. Excused in the name of abstractions like "liberty" and "country" and "dignity." But what dignity was there for those who died with a musket ball in their chest? No beast of the earth willfully killed its own kind. Only man, who then styled himself the noblest of God's creatures.

He loosened his hot lace collar, hoping to catch some of the on-again, off-again breeze that had risen in the south and now swept the pungent smell of Bridgetown's harbor up along the coast. Aside from the rattle of militiamen's bandoliers and occasional bursts of gallows laughter, the only sounds were night noises--the clack of foraging land crabs, the chirps and whistles of crickets and toads, the distant batter of surf and spray against the sand. Inland, the green hills of Barbados towered in dark silence.

He looked out to sea once more and realized the surf was beginning to rise, as wave after frothy wave chased up the crystalline sand of the shore, now bleached pale in the last waning moonlight. The ships were out there, he knew, waiting. He could almost feel their presence.

Both the trench and the breastwork were back away from the shore--back where the sand merged with brown clay and the first groves of palms, heralds of the hardwood thickets farther upland. Through the palms he could barely discern the silhouettes of the gunners as they loitered alongside the heavy ordnance, holding lighted linstocks. Fifteen cannon were there tonight, ranging in gauge from nine to eighteen-pound shot, shielded on the sea side by a head-high masonry wall cut with battlements for the guns.

Though the original Jamestown gun emplacement had been built two decades earlier, as a precaution against Spanish attack, that threat had faded over the years, and gradually the planters of Barbados had grown complacent. They had permitted the fort to slowly decay, its guns to clog with rust from the salt air.

How ironic, he thought, that now an English attack, not Spanish, had finally occasioned its first repairs. Over the past fortnight the old cannon had been cleaned of rust and primed; and new Dutch guns, all brass, had been hauled up by oxcart from Carlisle Bay and set in place. Now six of these, small demi-culverin, had just been removed from the breastwork and hauled to safety inland at first word of the invasion.

He heard the murmur of approaching voices and looked up to see two shadowy figures moving along the dirt parapet that protected the trench. One was tall and strode with a purposeful elegance; the other lumbered.

"It'll be a cursed dark night once we've lost the moon, and that's when they're apt to start launching the longboats. Damn Winston if he's not in place by then. Are his men over where they're supposed to be?" The hard voice of Benjamin Briggs drifted down. The silhouette that was Anthony Walrond merely nodded silently in reply.

Jeremy rose and began climbing up the parapet, his bandolier rattling. Anthony turned at the noise, recognized him, and motioned him forward.

"Are your men ready?"

"Yes, sir."

Anthony studied him thoughtfully a moment. "Watch yourself tonight, lad." He paused, then looked away. "Do remember to take care."

"That I will." Jeremy broke the silence between them. "But I'm not afraid, truly." He patted his bandolier for emphasis, causing the charge holders to clank one against the other. He knew he owed his assignment of the rank of ensign--which normally required holdings of at least fifteen acres--and the leadership of a squad solely to the influence of his older brother, who commanded the vital Jamestown defenses by unanimous consent of the Assembly.

Jeremy's militiamen--eight in number--were all small freeholders with rusty matchlocks and no battle experience. He had been too ashamed to tell Anthony he didn't desire the honor of being an officer. It was time to prove he was a Walrond.

"Jeremy, we all know fear, but we learn to rise above it. You'll make me proud tonight, I'll lay odds." He reached and adjusted the buckle of the shoulder strap holding Jeremy's sword. "Now have your men light their matchcord and ready the prime on their muskets."

Jeremy gave his brother a stiff salute and passed the order into the trench. A burning taper was handed slowly down the line of men, and each touched it to the tip of his matchcord, then threaded the glowing fuse through the serpentine cock of his musket. He secretly rejoiced he had a new-style flintlock; at least there would be no lighted matchcord to betray his own whereabouts in the dark. He stood for a moment watching his men prepare, then glanced back at the squat outline of Benjamin Briggs. What, he wondered, was he doing here tonight?

Briggs was gazing down at the parapet now, critically scuffing his boots against the soft earth. "This trench of yours will do damned little to protect these lads from cannon fire if somebody in the fleet takes a mind to shell the breastwork. I pray to God it was worth the time and trouble."

A crew of indentures, as well as many of Winston's new men, had worked around-the-clock for three days digging the trench. The idea had come from Anthony Walrond.

"I'm betting on an invasion, not an artillery duel." Anthony nodded toward Jeremy one last time, a light farewell, then turned back to Briggs. "An open shelling with their big ordnance would be foolhardy; right now it's too dark to try and fire on our emplacements. Add to that, we have word the commander in charge of the army is a Roundhead rogue named Dick Morris. I know him all too well. He doesn't believe in a lot of cannon fire, when a few men can achieve what he wants. He'll just try to land enough men to overrun and disable our guns."