Caribbee Part 11

"I've already told you . . ."

"But it's so seldom a man like me is privileged to meet a true lady."

His smile suddenly turned gracious. "As you were thoughtful enough to point out only a few moments ago. Why not humor me? I don't suppose you're his property. You seem a trifle too independent for that."

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

"Very well. Just one."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I have no intention of missing the grand start-up." She

tried to catch her breath. "It's to be history in the making, don't you recall?"

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

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

"Maybe she just told him that to avoid the dance." He turned and watched the planters begin filing out through the wide rear door.

"Shall we join them, then?"

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

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

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

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

And all this morning, before sunup, they were pounding on it. d.a.m.nedest racket this side of h.e.l.l."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I have not."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He stared at her a moment, as though preoccupied. "G.o.d help us all."

He might have said more, but then he glanced after the crowd, now moving down the road. Ahead of them a gang of blacks could be seen through the torchlight, carrying bundles of cane in from the field and stacking them in piles near the new mill, situated atop a slight rise.

A group of white indentured workers was also moving cane toward the mill from somewhere beyond the range of the torchlight, whipping forward a team of oxen pulling a large two-wheeled cart stacked with bundles. She noticed Winston seemed in no great hurry, and instead appeared to be listening absently to the planters.

"Would you believe this is the very same cane we brought from Brazil?"

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

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

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

When the sweeps were moved, the beam would rotate and with it the rollers.