Caribbean: a novel Part 30

'Former slaves killing and being killed.'

'He told us,' the colonel said, pointing to one of his men who had slipped into Morant Bay as soon as the rioting started to observe what was happening and what effect it might have on the Maroon settlements in the mountains.

'Governor, big man, he send me to ask you not to join the rioting.'

'I know governor. Name Eyre. Pretty good man. What he promise us, we stay out?'

'Horses. Like that one. Maybe more bullets for your guns.'

After protracted d.i.c.kering, the colonel astonished Jason by saying firmly: 'We just about ready to march to Morant ...'

'Oh no!' Paul pleaded, desperation almost checking his words. 'If you join the rioters ...'

'We not join them,' the colonel said. 'We kill them.'

'No! No!' Jason pleaded. 'Don't kill them. Don't kill the blacks. Don't kill anybody.'

'Former slaves no good. They defeat you buckra, quick soon they go after us. We kill them first.' And no urgent plea that Jason could utter had any effect on the colonel, who had decided long before Jason's arrival that the best interests of the Maroons would be served if they stormed into the troubled area and killed the black rioters.

With a speed that astonished Pembroke, Colonel Seymour signaled for the horns to resume blowing, and within minutes an expeditionary force consisting of some two hundred black men from various villages a.s.sembled, bringing with them a surprising number of good horses. Ordering the men who held Jason's horse to return it to him, Colonel Seymour said: 'You ride, too. Speak the officers what we do.' As Jason started for his horse, reluctant to partic.i.p.ate in what might become a fearsome raid, he heard Seymour say: 'Battle over, you can leave,' and he deemed it wise to go along.

Moving back down the mountain trail at a clip which made Jason gasp, the Maroon cavalry reached the main road, and there they turned east toward the settled areas where rioting had taken place. In the first half-hour of the charge Pembroke learned what character this expedition was going to take, for when they reached the black village of Conari, named for some ancient African settlement, Seymour divided his force into two groups, one to encircle the place, the other to dash in with flaming brands to set all huts afire. As the terrified occupants ran out to escape immolation, he shouted: 'Kill! Kill!' and everyone was chased down through the smoke. Men, women and children alike were slain by clubs and long cane knives if they were caught, by masterly gunfire in the middle of their backs if they tried to run. None survived.

'Seymour,' Jason cried as the murder continued in a second village the riders encountered, 'no more killing!' But the colonel harshly ignored this plea: 'n.i.g.g.e.rs no good. Kill all,' and he encouraged his Maroons to annihilate any blacks they came upon. Women and children were burned alive in their flaming shacks or shot as they tried to escape, and in this way the Maroons approached the princ.i.p.al town of Morant Bay.

There, fortunately, an army man, Colonel Hobbs, was in command, and he, antic.i.p.ating the great confusion that would result if the Maroons were allowed into the town already beset by riots and hangings, had drawn his soldiers into a line to prevent the savage mountain men from entering. Undaunted, Colonel Seymour turned and led his marauders toward other rural areas where they could rampage at will. Pembroke, left behind and awed by the storm he had let loose and its fiery results in death and destruction, told Hobbs: 'I came here on orders from the governor. To try to persuade the Maroons not to join the black rioters. I never dreamed they'd a.s.sa.s.sinate them.'

Hobbs waved his left hand as if dismissing the dead bodies: 'Forget them. They're rebellious n.i.g.g.e.rs and there'll be hundreds more dead before we get through.' Then he turned his horse northward and said: 'Before you head back for Kingston you might like to see one of our courts-martial in operation,' and he led the way to an improvised gra.s.s-walled shack in which three very young army and navy officers were conducting that day's trials.

A group of twenty-seven black men and two women stood shackled in one corner of the room guarded by armed sailors with dogs. The trial took exactly nine minutes, with the president of the court, an army man in his early twenties, asking: 'What are the charges against these criminals?' Pembroke supposed that since Hobbs was senior officer present, he would object to this terribly pejorative implication that the accused were already criminals before the evidence was in. But then he discovered that there was to be no evidence. A white man told the court: 'These were all involved in the rebellion.'

'Even the women?'

'Yes.'

'Verdict?' the judge asked his two fellow officials, and they said: 'Guilty,' whereupon the judge handed down his sentence: 'Hang the men. Seventy-five lashes for the women,' and the twenty-seven men were led out to be hanged. There were, however, s.p.a.ces on the suspended beam for only twenty ropes, so the sergeant in charge, without consulting the court, shot the others, moving from one pinioned man to the next and firing a pistol through the head, then kicking the body aside as the corpse fell.

In a sense those seven were lucky, for the improvised mode of hanging allowed for no sudden drop to break the neck. The men were hauled aloft, kicking and struggling and slowly strangling, until the sergeant shouted: 'Pull those men's legs!' and soldiers moved forward to lift the almost dead bodies slightly, then jerk them down with as much force as could be applied in that unsatisfactory way. Since this accomplished little, most of the men continued to strangle and gyrate on their ropes until the sergeant, in disgust, moved along the line shooting at them upward from the point of the chin through the head.

Pembroke was sickened by this brutality performed in the name of Governor Eyre and Queen Victoria, but it was what happened to the two women prisoners that made him realize the awful things a military court restrained by no law was capable of doing. The two women were stripped from the waist down, thrown on the ground with b.u.t.tocks uncovered, and given twenty-five lashes each on the bare skin, not with an ordinary whip but with a cat-o'-nine-tails into which strong wires had been woven. The sailors given the task of whipping the women seemed to enjoy it, for they struck with such force that by the end of the fifth application of this almost deadly instrument, the flesh along the women's backsides and legs was raw and bleeding. Young soldiers watching the beatings counted out the strokes in a chorus, and at the end of the first twenty-five lashes the beatings stopped, with the women almost unconscious from the pain.

But that was far from the end of their punishment, for after they were revived by water thrown in their faces, they were again thrown onto the ground and another twenty-five were applied with increasing vigor by the energetic sailors, who were applauded by the counting soldiers. Again Jason expected Hobbs to intervene, but the latter stood near the two women, a smile on his face, fists clenched, and counting as the blows fell.

When the fiftieth lash tore at the shredding skin, the beating stopped, and Jason felt impelled to protest: 'Colonel Hobbs, stop this cruelty, please.'

'You heard the verdict. Guilty of rebellion. You heard the sentence,' and he watched smiling as the women were thrown to the ground for the third time, with the dreadful metal-clothed cats cutting into their bloodied flesh. Only with supreme self-control did Pembroke refrain from leaping to their defense, and this was fortunate for him, for had he tried to make any move of compa.s.sion in this frenzied atmosphere of revenge, the young military men present, who saw nothing wrong with the punishment, might have turned on him and killed him.

When the hideous performance ended, with the flayed women unconscious beside the seven men who had been shot and below the dangling legs of the twenty who had been hanged, Pembroke wanted to flee, but as he prepared to ride back to Kingston, fifteen more accused were led into the shack where the same impartial court awaited them. At this moment, Hobbs said something which spurred Jason into precipitate action, regardless of the consequences: 'Good news just in from Kingston. They've caught that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Gordon, and Governor Eyre is sending him over to us for trial.'

As soon as he heard this wretched news, Jason realized how improper it was, and wis.h.i.+ng to dissociate himself from the murderous Hobbs, he quietly slipped away and galloped eastward, hoping to persuade Governor Eyre to countermand what he knew to be a misguided order.

By dint of forced riding on a horse already tired, Jason reached Eyre's Kingston residence before the decision to s.h.i.+p Gordon to a St. Thomas court-martial had been put into effect, and breaking unannounced into Eyre's office, he blurted out: 'Governor, for the love of G.o.d and mercy, do not send George Gordon to a court-martial in St. Thomas-in-the-East. They've gone crazy over there.'

'They're doing their duty,' Eyre said sternly, holding himself erect and speaking with controlled force. 'Those who rebelled against the queen must pay the price.'

'But the court's behavior is inhuman. Las.h.i.+ng women with wire bands in the cats.'

'Women are often the worst offenders. They should be hanged also.'

'Governor Eyre, I reached the Maroons. Kept them from joining the riots on the side of the blacks.'

'Sterling job, Jason. Dangerous, too.'

'The Maroons went on a rampage against the blacks. Killing, burning. Women and children.'

'When a man like Gordon launches a rebellion, he should antic.i.p.ate consequences.'

'But he was not in St. Thomas. He played no role in starting the riot.'

Governor Eyre was so infuriated by this defense of the man he was determined to hang that he almost dismissed Pembroke, but the young man's gallantry in going alone into Maroon territory warranted approval, and Eyre had to bestow it: 'You've behaved like a true Englishman, Pembroke. Duty called and you answered.'

'Now it's my duty, Governor, to tell you one basic truth. Everything you've done so far, every action you've taken has been impeccable. Governors.h.i.+p at its best. The rioting has been brought under control. Island-wide disturbance has been avoided.'

'Thank you. I tried my best ... against great difficulties, I must say. They all wanted me to declare martial law throughout the island.'

'Thank G.o.d, you didn't. And now you must halt it where it does exist.'

Eyre could hardly bear to listen to such advice: 'Gordon has done a terrible wrong in starting this rebellion. Punishment must continue as a lesson to rebels and he must bear his share.'

'But you can't send him to St. Thomas. That's judicial murder.'

'He must learn his lesson.'

With anguish in his voice, Pembroke begged: 'Governor Eyre, all you've done so far bears the mark of greatness. But if you do this to Gordon, and keep the courts-martial operating, you run a terrible risk. You will be seen as having corrupted the channels of justice. England could well condemn you.'

The words stung, for they touched upon the weakness of Eyre's position, his l.u.s.t for personal revenge so strong that he was willing to ignore the traditions of English justice. He knew that Gordon was not legally responsible for the rioting, which he termed rebellion. He knew that a civil court in Kingston would never convict the preacher, or hang him if it did. And worst of all, he was fully aware that he had no authority to kidnap Gordon from civil law in Kingston and throw him into the hands of a court-martial which had no authority over him, an act equivalent to murder. But his smoldering animosity toward this difficult man was so great that in his self-defense he made an appalling admission: 'I have always detested George Gordon. A man of color marrying a white woman to gain advantages. A Baptist sectarian always denigrating our national religion. And worst of all, an unlettered peasant daring to ridicule our queen.'

'I don't believe he ever did,' Pembroke said. 'He merely protested the silly letter released in her name,' but Eyre insisted: 'He spat upon her letter,' and when Jason again corrected: 'Some foolish women did, not he,' Eyre snapped: 'He encouraged it and must pay the penalty. Come, we're sailing to St. Thomas today.'

'Governor, I must protest again. You do this at great risk to your reputation. All honest men, Governor, will see that your actions are illegal and colored by a desire for personal vengeance. For the sake of your honorable name, do not do this thing.'

Eyre could not be deterred. George Gordon, a frail bookish man in steel-rimmed gla.s.ses, was marched in handcuffs to the waiting Wolverine; Eyre came aboard attended by Pembroke, who still hoped to dissuade the governor from committing a hateful deed, and the fatal journey to St. Thomas-in-the-East began. But the short sea pa.s.sage was like something from an ancient drama in which G.o.ds and nature conspired against an evil act, for a great storm arose, buffeting the s.h.i.+p for three days and nights and delaying Governor Eyre from delivering the preacher to the waiting court-martial. During this turbulence Pembroke had a last opportunity to talk with Gordon, who said with a surprising calmness: 'I shall be hanged tomorrow, and Jamaica will never forget that day, for it will be murder.'

When the storm abated, the preacher was led ash.o.r.e under a naval guard and marched through the streets to where the court was sitting, and as he went, soldiers and sailors, convinced of his guilt, hurled epithets at him, and some cried: 'Here comes Parson Gordon on his way to be hanged,' while others shouted: 'I'd love to give you a taste of the cat before you die, you traitor!' The mood was so savage that one reporter noted accurately: 'Doubtless, if the blue jackets had been left to exercise their own will, he would have been torn to pieces alive.'

In the improvised shed from which so many had been dragged to be hanged, the court-martial consisted of two young naval officers and one army man even younger. They had no concept of what jurisdiction was nor whether they had any authority to pa.s.s judgment on a man who had not been in St. Thomas, and certainly no idea whatever as to what const.i.tuted admissible evidence. They had been ordered to mete out justice to criminals, and they had no trouble in recognizing Parson Gordon as the princ.i.p.al instigator of the riots, because they were told that was what he had been.

There was evidence: letters written to the court from persons elsewhere in the island who were not present to be cross-questioned. Several people said they were sure Gordon had been responsible for the rebellion, and very damaging evidence was brought forth that he had scorned The Queen's Advice. The Morant Bay postmistress testified that since she always read whatever material came through her office in printed or open form, she could state positively that Gordon had mailed subversive literature, though what it was precisely she could not remember.

The young judge allowed Gordon to make a statement in his defense, but it contained only what the preacher had always said to Pembroke and others of his friends, that he wanted to help the citizens of Jamaica better their lot. The three judges paid little attention to his rambling and had no difficulty in finding him guilty, or in sentencing him to be hanged.

The trial was held on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and because the officer who would carry out the sentence felt it might be improper to hang a clergyman on a Sunday, the execution was deferred till Monday morning. It rained Sunday night, and on Monday heavy clouds, fringed by the sun which hid behind them, darkened the stone archway from which the rope was suspended. The preacher stood on a wooden plank, totally pinioned lest he try to escape, and when that plank was suddenly withdrawn he plunged to his slow, strangling death. Governor Eyre had been avenged for the insults he imagined that Gordon had heaped upon him.

Jason Pembroke, now anxious to return to Trevelyan, hoped that with the hanging of Gordon, martial law throughout St. Thomas would be terminated and that the various courts-martial, over which no one had any control would be dissolved, but neither of these desired orders was given. Instead, Governor Eyre a.s.signed him to serve with that Colonel Hobbs he had met while with the Maroons. Hobbs, who had seen action overseas, especially at the siege of Sebastopol in the Crimean War, was an easy man for ordinary soldiers to like, for he treated his men well and obeyed a keen sense of military duty. Jason, aware that the rebellion, if it was one, expected Hobbs to exert stern discipline, keep his youthful charges under control, and report that military rule, at least in his quarter, should be ended, there being no signs of any further disturbance.

But Jason's a.n.a.lysis was flawed, for the real horror of martial law had not yet shown its cruel face. The Maroons, considering themselves free to loot and burn, shot nearly two hundred blacks, rejoicing as if engaged in a jolly hunting party. Colonel Hobbs' men specialized in shooting any blacks they saw on remote hillsides, competing among themselves as to who could kill at the greatest distance. When Jason protested these barbarities, Hobbs showed him the letter from the island headquarters under which he served: Push on. Colonel Hole is doing splendid service, shooting every black man who cannot account for himself, sixty during one march. Colonel Nelson is hanging like fun. I hope you will not bring in any prisoners. Do punish the blackguards well.

That, of course, was license for extermination, and Hobbs discharged his a.s.signment with exuberance, finding special delight in hanging men or las.h.i.+ng women if it was said of them: 'That one scorned the queen.' He could not tolerate the thought that a black had cast aspersions on the queen, and his eyes glazed over when Jason argued: 'Hobbs, can't you see that their protest was not disrespect for the queen?'

'How could that be?'

'They were unwilling to believe that she could have dismissed them so coldly, for they love her.' Hobbs, eyes still glazed, rasped: 'You heard. They laughed at her Advice. Hang them.'

Jason could never antic.i.p.ate what Hobbs might do next. Once along a distant road they came upon a black man who could have had no connection with the rioting, but when Hobbs heard that the man's name was Arthur Wellington and he was reputed to be an obeah man, a sorcerer, he fell into a maniacal rage: 'How dare a n.i.g.g.e.r take the name of a great man like the duke! How dare he claim to have strange powers! I'll teach him!' and he had Wellington tethered to a tree on the far side of a gully. Then, ordering all blacks from nearby to watch, he had his men line up and fire from a distance of more than four hundred yards. Several of the bullets struck the tethered man, killing him, whereupon Hobbs shouted to the watchers: 'What mystical powers does he have now?' and they were impressed with the superiority of the white man's gun over the black man's powers.

One soldier serving with Hobbs showed Jason the letter he was sending his parents in England: I tell you we have never had so much fun. We leave no man or woman or child if they be black. We shoot them all, sometimes a hundred a day. Some we put aside to have sport with. We tie them to a tree, give them a hundred lashes, then drag them to the s.h.i.+ps and hang them from the yardarm. I do believe we average fifty to sixty hanged every day. Such sport.

Pembroke, revolted by such excess, begged Hobbs to halt the killing, but the honored veteran of the Crimea, a man of proved valor, seemed to have turned into a frenzied savage, for all he would respond was: 'It's like India ... colored men rising against white. And it cannot be permitted.'

While Pembroke was going through the agony of seeing Englishmen run wild, his cousin Oliver was having a much different reaction to martial law. He was serving as second-in-command to a certified military hero, Gordon Dewberry Ramsay, who had galloped in the lead during the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava and won England's highest honor for doing so, the Victoria Cross. He served in Jamaica as a police inspector, and because he was a hearty type, Croome worked well with him, a.s.sisting in the floggings, the shootings and the hangings. Like Ramsay, he believed that the honor of the white man had been traduced by the blacks, that Baptists had scorned the established church, and that almost every black had insulted the queen. Under those circ.u.mstances, mercy was unwarranted and almost any punishment that Ramsay meted out was justified.

Ramsay, carrying a small stick like a baton, would march through a village and peremptorily order his men: 'Give that one a dozen,' whereupon the metaled cat would be applied on the spot. Several times he growled: 'That one looks a bad lot. Give him a score,' and the man would be thrashed.

On one occasion he was watching the application of fifty lashes to a thin black man who had given no offense, when at the forty-seventh blow the man grimaced from the unbearable pain. In a rage Ramsay shouted: 'That man bared his teeth at me. Take him down and hang him.'

Croome saw nothing wrong in these excesses, for no matter what preposterous act of revenge Ramsay engaged in, like the hanging of scores without even the pretense of a trial, he approved, for as he told Ramsay repeatedly: 'They took arms against the queen. They deserve whatever you give them,' and he applauded when any black men who seemed to have an ugly countenance received proper punishment. 'That one looks an evil fellow,' Ramsay would cry, pointing with his baton. 'Hang him.'

Jason Pembroke, having witnessed Hobbs behaving no better, had at least questioned his mental stability, but Oliver Croome saw nothing wrong with what Ramsay was doing, and even helped him rampage through St. Thomas dispensing blind revenge. Once as the pair watched a black woman receiving a hundred strokes of the cat, Ramsay said: 'She was heard by three different people to speak ill of The Queen's Advice,' and Croome said: 'You do well to halt such treason.'

An admiring newspaperman who traveled for some days with Ramsay and Croome wrote: These stalwarts, who are protecting the safety of all white men and women in the island, have with them a huge sailor from one of the s.h.i.+ps who is a master-hand at flogging. Every stroke he applies lands with a resounding 'Whoosh' and a dozen from his mighty right arm equal twoscore from someone else. I saw him give seventy of his best to one man, and when he was finished, the criminal could barely stand erect, and a man near me said: 'He'll go bent for life.'

Of the routine hangings, Hobbs and Ramsay accounted for about two hundred.

On the last day of October 1865, Governor Eyre, a humane man at heart and unaware of the terrible havoc Hobbs and Ramsay had been creating, ended martial law except for those already under arrest, and what was more important, granted a general amnesty. Then, to demonstrate what a perceptive political leader he was, on 8 November he persuaded the inept Legislative a.s.sembly, which had proved itself powerless to halt the rebellion, to abolish itself, thus terminating self-rule in Jamaica and reinst.i.tuting it as a Crown Colony to be governed by edict from London.

This move was enthusiastically approved throughout the island. Laudatory editorials appeared in the press extolling both his heroism and sagacity, and testimonials were offered by the score. As the year ended with Jamaica under rule by the crown, the killings were forgotten and an honorable peace settled over the island, so that Eyre could reasonably claim, as he did, that his bold and forthright action, his prompt termination of military rule, and his attention to the welfare of all cla.s.ses in Jamaica had brought the island a tranquillity it had not known for years. With the troublemaker Gordon disposed of, he could, with confidence, look forward to a rule of twenty more productive years, secure in the love of his people, who regarded him as a true hero. But even as he voiced this hope when alone, for he thought of himself as a modest man, a storm was brewing in Great Britain which would toss him about in its violent eddies, making him for three years one of the most noted men in the realm.

It was remarkable that grisly events in a remote corner of an island in the Caribbean should have disrupted the headquarters of empire, but Jamaica was no ordinary colony. For two centuries it had been a source not only of sugar fortunes but also of political power. Selfish laws bulled through by its members of Parliament had been a prime cause of the American Revolution, so that what happened on its great plantations had always been a matter of concern in London.

Now the most ugly rumors were flas.h.i.+ng through Great Britain. 'n.i.g.g.e.r uprising in the colonies!' screamed some, while others muttered: 'An English governor has been behaving as if it were 1766 on some savage island!' And before the year was out, the battle lines in Britain had formed dramatically. In st.u.r.dy, unwavering support of Eyre were five of the nation's greatest writers: Thomas Carlyle, the moralist who scorned n.i.g.g.e.rs; John Ruskin, the popular aesthete; Charles d.i.c.kens, read by everyone; Charles Kingsley, who preached 'manly Christianity' and wrote enormously popular novels; and above all, Alfred Tennyson, the wildly acclaimed poet laureate. These five formed a kind of patriotic-sentimental battalion around Eyre's heroic name, winning the publicity battles and defending to the bitter end Eyre's right to shoot down n.i.g.g.e.rs if for any reason they took arms against whites. They had been terrified by the implications of the Indian Mutiny and deemed Eyre's actions to prevent a recurrence in Jamaica not only proper but also rather restrained. They saw him not as a chance hero but as a protector of the white race against a possibly resurgent black, and it was intolerable to them to hear others charge that he had been imprudent in declaring martial law or administering it. All five of these great authors agreed that the blacks had got only what they deserved.

But there was another group of British leaders, more sober and less sentimental, who deplored Eyre's behavior on a distant island far from the scrutiny of Parliament, and again some of the greatest names rallied to this version of the cause: Charles Darwin, the geneticist; Herbert Spencer, the moral philosopher; Thomas Huxley, the scientist; John Bright, the powerful Quaker reformer; and again above all, John Stuart Mill, perhaps the wisest and most brilliant man in the world at that time. These men, always brooding about the problems of right and wrong, believed that for Great Britain to condone Governor Eyre's frenzied behavior in the remote parish of St. Thomas-in-the-East was to imperil the security of the empire, and they were determined that he be brought before the bar of justice to give an account of himself. They interpreted his cruelty against blacks as a frightening throwback to the days of slavery, a last-gasp attempt of wealthy landowners to protect their interests, and an affront to all decent Christians and lovers of liberty.

Neither side was noted for restraint or its willingness to accept compromise.

The field was set for a fierce battle between two groups of men who evaluated the future in drastically different ways. The writers wanted to recapture the glories of the past or at least hold on to what remnants still existed throughout the empire; the scientists hoped to get on with building a new and better world. The writers put loyalty to the crown above everything; the scientists, loyalty to reason and inevitable development. The writers were committed to the defense of the white man in his benevolent rule over others; the scientists, to that fraternity of peoples which alone, they believed, could build the future. And in a curious way, each group was ardently loyal to the concept of British Empire, the writers holding that it could be preserved only by the bold actions of governors like Eyre, the scientists arguing that a few more governors like him would destroy any chance of keeping it together.

It was an honorable debate focused on the dishonorable behavior of men like Hobbs and Ramsay, a gigantic intellectual and moral confrontation centered upon a relatively minor historical figure like Eyre. Eventually it involved newspapers, orations in Parliament, the bold intercession of Britain's greatest jurists, and even the columns of Punch, which chimed in early with clever rhymes proving that they, like most of the establishment, were solidly behind Eyre: Does human kindness drain its cup For black and whitey-brown, That still you cry the darkey up, And bawl the white man down?

That every question, fairly tried, Two sides must have, is true; If this one have its sooty side, It has its white side too.

People in all corners of the British Isles found themselves either supporting Eyre or condemning him, but there was also another topic of singular importance agitating the public. Britain in these years was struggling to pa.s.s a Reform Bill which would, at long last, award the smaller cities their proper share of the vote, which meant taking parliamentary seats from Conservative rural areas and turning them over to Liberal urban ones. Leaders of the anti-Eyre group, Mill and Bright in particular, were vigorous advocates of this reform, while pro-Eyre men were against it. However, attention at the moment focused not on Parliament but on what had happened in St. Thomas-in-the-East, and as in the 1760s when Jamaican planters dominated British politics, the descendants of those men now played an important role in British history.

On a sunny day in early 1866, a ruddy-faced Oliver Croome left the mansion in London's Cavendish Square which his sugar-rich ancestors had erected when they bought their seats in Parliament, and he was astonished to see coming from the Pembroke mansion on the opposite side of the square his cousin, the bearded, able Jason. Rus.h.i.+ng over to him, Oliver cried with delight: 'Jason! What brings you here?' and under the trees the two men who had worked so long and so well together revealed the surprising developments that had brought them by different paths to London.

Oliver spoke first: 'When the committee of the world's best writers was put together to defend Governor Eyre against his enemies, and they're a nasty lot, the members asked him: "Who can we bring up from Jamaica to counter the lies the others are telling?" and Eyre said I knew the facts better than most, and here I am, all expenses paid, though I'd have been proud to come on me own ... to save the man's reputation.'

Jason bowed his head, looked at his knuckles, and said quietly: 'Sorry to tell you, Oliver, but the men who're determined to drag Eyre into court asked me to come help them. Miserable business.'

To hide his shock, Oliver asked: 'Didja bring your wife with you from Jamaica?'

'No, Beth said she'd heard enough of Eyre and his problems.'

'Nell didn't want to come for the same reason,' and Jason consoled his fellow bachelor: 'We won't be here long.'

Oliver generously proposed that his cousin stay with him: 'Save time and trouble.' But Jason had a good excuse for not accepting: 'Mill has cramped rooms and likes to hold the meetings of our committee in my quarters. There is ample s.p.a.ce,' and the two parted, vowing not to let the Eyre business affect their personal relations.h.i.+p. Croome, from his side of the square, watched as the moral giants opposed to Eyre a.s.sembled in the Pembroke mansion, and thought: What an ugly group of self-righteous men, not a smile in the lot.

In any group of which John Stuart Mill was a member, he was the automatic chairman to whom others deferred, an icy intellect, a man carved from marble. On this day he was tardy, and in his absence John Bright sat with Jason between the two mammoth statues which had graced this room since the 1760s: Venus Resisting the Advances of Mars and Victory Rewarding Heroism. At first Bright sat facing the Venus, but her voluptuous curves so disturbed his Quaker austerity that he said: 'Better, I think, if I exchange chairs with thee, Jason,' but now he faced a blatant glorification of heroism, and this too he found intolerable: 'Reminds one of Carlyle's nonsense, heroes and all that. Let us sit over here,' and having found escape from the oppressive statues, he asked: 'I suppose thee knows, Pembroke, that our Mill is a prodigious man?'

'I've seen he commands attention.'

'But has thee heard of his schooling?' When Jason shook his head, Bright said with obvious enthusiasm and envy: 'Never was he allowed to attend a day of school or university.'

'Why not?'

'His father, an extraordinary man of forceful character, considered the boy too promising to be directed by ordinary teaching. "I will educate him," he said, and at three John had mastered Greek. At six he had read most of the easy works of the Greek authors like Herodotus and Xenophon and had launched into Plato. At eight he began his study of Latin and mastered Euclid. At eleven he started writing his own history of Rome, an excellent, mature work which he completed at twelve. From there on, it was the solid filling in of empty spots, all known knowledge of humankind, especially mathematics, science, French, German, everything.'

'And it didn't turn him sour?'

'The contrary. His father wouldn't allow that. Took him on holiday journeys, gave him joyous books to read, introduced him to men of substance, anything to forge him into a man of learning and judgment. In my efforts for others, I've known many of the fine men of this world, and the best rate four to his ten. I myself rate three.'

'What impressed me,' Jason said, 'was that when he learned I was from Jamaica, he hurried forward, sat me down beside him, and said, staring at me: "What we desperately need is the truth. They tell me you were there, in all parts. What happened? Not what you heard, only what you saw." '

'What did you tell him?'

'I said that the official report said that four hundred and thirty-nine people had been murdered, six hundred had been whipped, and a thousand homes had been burnt. He asked: "But what really happened?" and I said: "I saw at least six hundred dead, many killed in far corners by Maroons, bodies that could never be counted. I myself saw more than three hundred whipped, about half of them women. And since I pa.s.sed at least a thousand destroyed houses, the real number must be twice that." '

'And what did he say?'

'He put his hands to his head for some moments, then looked at me and said in that grave voice: "Terrible carnage. Terrible wrong." '

Now Mill came into the room like a cold, clear moon rising suddenly in autumn. Seeing Bright, he hastened to him: 'Good friend, we've taken one step forward in the Eyre matter. We've forced the courts to issue warrants of murder against two of the officers who conducted those infamous courts-martial.' This brought cheers from the others, except Bright, who pointed out the nagging fact: 'But Eyre himself still escapes us, does he not?'

'He does,' Mill said with distaste. 'Fled to Market Drayton, a rural town northwest of Birmingham, where the London courts can't reach.' Then he added, with obvious determination: 'But we shall smoke him out. Governor Eyre will pay for his crimes, for we shall never rest.'

Cries of Hear! Hear! greeted this reaffirmation of war, and Jason thought: How much he sounds like Eyre hounding Gordon. But then Mill began to speak in a more gentle voice, and for the first time Pembroke had a chance to hear this sixty-year-old oracle expound the wisdom for which he was famous. Totally bald and clean-shaven except for sideburns that framed his chiseled Roman face, he spoke deliberately as if calculating the precise weight of each word: 'I have been much impressed by the reflections of a German scientist versed in the workings of the human mind, and he has led me to speculate on the error which trapped Eyre into persecuting Gordon, ignoring law and propriety and the tenets of military justice. The professor coined a new word for this affliction, monomania, built of two fine Greek words: mono, meaning alone or one, and mania, which of course is madness. Eyre is a cla.s.sic example of the aberration. He was driven by one compulsion: vengeance on Gordon, and when we prove that in court, he ... is ... doomed.'

'Can we lure him out of Market Drayton?' Bright asked, and Mill said: 'If not, we shall carry our fight to him there, in his courtyard,' to which Bright, a veteran brawler in the rugged alleyways of public opinion, warned: 'The rustic justices of Market Drayton will not be much concerned about what happened in Jamaica, but they'll be most concerned about our hectoring a decent man who was trying only to do his duty.'