"No time." He motioned to Ruyters. "Remember our agreement last night?""Aye, and I suppose there's no choice. I couldn't make open sea in time now anyway." The Dutchman's eyes were rueful. "I'll have some round shot sent up first, and then start offloading my nine-pound demi-culverin.""All we need now is enough shot to make them think we've got a decent battery up here. We can bring up more ordnance later.""May I remind you,"Bedfordinterjected, "we're not planning to start an all-out war. We just need time to try and talk reason with Parliament, to try and keep what we've got here."Winston noticed Briggs and several members of the Council had convened in solemn conference. If an attack comes, he found himself wondering, which of them will be the first to side with Parliament's forces and betray the island?"There's twenty budge-barrels, Cap'n." Mewes was returning. "I gave it a taste an' I'll wager it's dry and usable."Winston nodded, then motioned toward Edwin Spurre. "Have the men here carry five barrels on down to the Point, so the gunnery mates can start priming the culverin. Be sure they check all the touch holes for rust.""Aye." Spurre signaled four of the seamen to follow him as he started off toward the powder magazine. Suddenly he was surrounded and halted by a group of Irish indentures.Timothy Farrell approached Winston and bowed. "So please Yor Worship, we'd like to be doin' any carryin' you need here. An' we'd like to be the ones meetin' them on the beaches.""You don't have to involve yourself, Farrell. I'd say you've got little enough here to risk your life for.""Aye, Yor Worship, that's as it may be. But are we to understand that fleet out there's been sent by that whoreson archfiend Oliver Cromwell?""That's what we think now.""Then beggin' Yor Worship's pardon, we'd like to be the mento gut every scum on board. Has Yor Worship heard what he did atDrogheda?""I heard he sent the army.""Aye. WhenIrelandrefused to bow to his Parliament, he claimed we were Papists who had no rights. He led his Puritan troops to Irish soil, Yor Worship, and laid siege to our garrison- city ofDrogheda. Then he let his soldiers slaughter our people. Three thousand men, women, and children. An' for it, he was praised from the Puritan pulpits inEngland." Farrell paused to collect himself. "My cousin died there,Yor Worship,wi' his Meggie. An' one of Cromwell's brave Puritan soldiers used their little daughter as a shield when he helped storm an' burn the church, so they could murder the priests. Maybe that heretic bastard thinks we've not heard about it here." He bowed again. "We don't know enough about primin' and firin' cannon, but wi' Yor Worship's leave, we'd like to be the ones carryin' all the powder and shot for you.""Permission granted." Winston thumbed them in the direction of Spurre.The armada of sails was clearly visible on the horizon now, and rapidly swelling. As the first streaks of dawn showed across the waters, English colors could be seen on the flagship. It was dark brown and massive, with wide cream-colored sails. Now it had put on extra canvas, pulling away from the fleet, bearing down on the harbor.Winston studied the man-of-war, marveling at its majesty and size. How ironic, he thought.England's never sent a decent warship against the Spaniards in theNew World, even after they burned out helpless settlements. But now they send the pick of the navy, against their own people."Damned to them, that is theRainbowe. "Bedfordsquinted at the ship. "She's a first-rank man-of-war, fifty guns. She was King Charles' royal ship of war. She'll transport a good two hundred infantry."Winston felt his stomach tighten. Could it be there'd be morethan a blockade? Had Parliament really sent the English army to invade the island?"I'm going down to the breastwork." He glanced quickly at Katherine, then turned and began to make his way toward the gun emplacements. Edwin Spurre and the indentures were moving slowly through the early half-light, carrying kegs of powder."I think we can manage with these guns, Cap'n." Canninge was standing by the first cannon, his long hair matted against the sweat on his forehead. "I've cleaned out the touch holes and checked the charge delivered by the powder ladle we found. They're eighteen-pounders, culverin, and there's some shot here that ought to serve.""Then prime and load them. On the double.""Aye."Using a long-handled ladle, he and the men began to shove precisely measured charges of powder, twenty pounds, into the muzzle of each cannon. The indentures were heaving round shot onto their shoulders and stacking piles beside the guns.Winston watched the approaching sail, wondering how and why it had suddenly all come to this. Was he about to be the first man in theAmericasto fire a shot declaring war againstEngland? He looked around to see Dalby Bedford standing behind him, with Katherine at his side."You know what it means if we open fire on theRainbowe? I'd guess it's Cromwell's flagship now.""I do indeed. It'd be war. I pray it'll not come to that. I'd like to try and talk with them first, if we can keep them out of the bay." The governor's face was grim. "Try once across her bow. Just a warning. Maybe she'll strike sail and let us know her business.""Care to hold one last vote in the Assembly about this, before we fire the first shot? Something tells me it's not likely to be the last.""We've just talked. There's no need for a vote. No man here, royalist or no, is going to stand by and just hand over this place.We'll negotiate, but we'll not throw up our hands and surrender. There's too much at stake."Winston nodded and turned to Canninge. "They're pulling close to range. When you're ready, lay a round across her bow. Then hold for orders.""Aye." Canninge smiled and pointed toward a small gun at the end of the row, its dark brass glistening in the early light. "I'll use that little six-pounder. We'll save the eighteen-pounders for the work to come."Have you got range yet?""Give me a minute to set her, and I’ll wager I can lay a round shot two hundred yards in front of the bow." He turned and barked an order. Seamen hauled the tackles, rolling the gun into position. Then they levered the breech slightly upward to lower the muzzle, jamming a wooden wedge between the gun and the wooden truck to set it in position.Winston took a deep breath, then glanced back atBedford. "This may be the most damn foolhardy thing that's ever been done."Bedford's voice was grave. "It's on my authority."He turned back to Canninge. "Fire when ready."The words were swallowed in the roar as the gunner touched a piece of burning matchrope to the cannon's firing hole. Dark smoke boiled up from the muzzle, acrid in the fresh morning air. Moments later a plume erupted off the bow of the English man-of-war.Almost as though the ship had been waiting, it veered suddenly to port. Winston realized the guns had already been run out. They'd been prepared. Puffs of black smoke blossomed out of the upper gun deck, and moments later a line of plumes shot up along the surf just below the Point."They fired when they dipped into a swell." Canninge laughed. "English gunnery still disappoints me."A fearful hush dropped over the crowd, and Winston stood listening as the sound of the guns echoed over the Point. "They probably don't suspect we've got any trained gunners up here this morning. Otherwise they'd never have opened fire when they're right under our ordnance." He glanced atBedford. "You've got their reply. What's yours?""I suppose there's only one answer." The governor looked back and surveyed the waiting members of the Assembly. Several men removed their hats and began to confer together. Moments later they looked up and nodded. He turned back. "What can you do to her?""Is that authority to fire?""Full authority.""Then get everybody back up the hill. Now." He watched asBedfordgave the order and the crowd began to quickly melt away. The Irish indentures waited behind Winston, refusing to move. He gestured a few of the men forward, to help set the guns, then turned back to Canninge."Is there range?""Aye, just give me a minute to set the rest of these culverin."Winston heard a rustle of skirts by his side and knew Katherine was standing next to him. He reached out and caught her arm. "You've got a war now, Katherine, whether you wanted it or not. It'll be the first time a settlement in theAmericashas ever fired on an English ship. I guess that's the price you're going to have to pay for staying your own master. But I doubt you'll manage it.""We just might." She reached and touched the hand on her arm. Then she turned and looked out to sea. "We have to try."Winston glanced toward the guns. Canninge and the men had finished turning them on theRainbowe, using long wooden handspikes. Now they were adjusting the wooden wedge at the breech of each gun to set the altitude. "How does it look?""I know these eighteen-pounders, Cap'n, like I was born to one. At this range I could line-of-sight these whoresons any place you like."'' How about just under the lower gun deck? At the water line? The first round better count.""Aye, that's what I've set them for." He grinned and reached for a burning linstock. "I didn't figure we was up here to send a salute."Book TwoREVOLUTIONChapter EightThe 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 ofBarbados”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 allEngland. 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 assertEngland's economic control of its settlements in theNew 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.Englandbelonged 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 theRainbowe.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 otherislands 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 herselfthinking 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?"
"No time." He motioned to Ruyters. "Remember our agreement last night?"
"Aye, and I suppose there's no choice. I couldn't make open sea in time now anyway." The Dutchman's eyes were rueful. "I'll have some round shot sent up first, and then start offloading my nine-pound demi-culverin."
"All we need now is enough shot to make them think we've got a decent battery up here. We can bring up more ordnance later."
"May I remind you,"Bedfordinterjected, "we're not planning to start an all-out war. We just need time to try and talk reason with Parliament, to try and keep what we've got here."
Winston noticed Briggs and several members of the Council had convened in solemn conference. If an attack comes, he found himself wondering, which of them will be the first to side with Parliament's forces and betray the island?
"There's twenty budge-barrels, Cap'n." Mewes was returning. "I gave it a taste an' I'll wager it's dry and usable."
Winston nodded, then motioned toward Edwin Spurre. "Have the men here carry five barrels on down to the Point, so the gunnery mates can start priming the culverin. Be sure they check all the touch holes for rust."
"Aye." Spurre signaled four of the seamen to follow him as he started off toward the powder magazine. Suddenly he was surrounded and halted by a group of Irish indentures.
Timothy Farrell approached Winston and bowed. "So please Yor Worship, we'd like to be doin' any carryin' you need here. An' we'd like to be the ones meetin' them on the beaches."
"You don't have to involve yourself, Farrell. I'd say you've got little enough here to risk your life for."
"Aye, Yor Worship, that's as it may be. But are we to understand that fleet out there's been sent by that whoreson archfiend Oliver Cromwell?"
"That's what we think now."
"Then beggin' Yor Worship's pardon, we'd like to be the men
to gut every scum on board. Has Yor Worship heard what he did atDrogheda?"
"I heard he sent the army."
"Aye. WhenIrelandrefused to bow to his Parliament, he claimed we were Papists who had no rights. He led his Puritan troops to Irish soil, Yor Worship, and laid siege to our garrison- city ofDrogheda. Then he let his soldiers slaughter our people. Three thousand men, women, and children. An' for it, he was praised from the Puritan pulpits inEngland." Farrell paused to collect himself. "My cousin died there,Yor Worship,wi' his Meggie. An' one of Cromwell's brave Puritan soldiers used their little daughter as a shield when he helped storm an' burn the church, so they could murder the priests. Maybe that heretic bastard thinks we've not heard about it here." He bowed again. "We don't know enough about primin' and firin' cannon, but wi' Yor Worship's leave, we'd like to be the ones carryin' all the powder and shot for you."
"Permission granted." Winston thumbed them in the direction of Spurre.
The armada of sails was clearly visible on the horizon now, and rapidly swelling. As the first streaks of dawn showed across the waters, English colors could be seen on the flagship. It was dark brown and massive, with wide cream-colored sails. Now it had put on extra canvas, pulling away from the fleet, bearing down on the harbor.
Winston studied the man-of-war, marveling at its majesty and size. How ironic, he thought.England's never sent a decent warship against the Spaniards in theNew World, even after they burned out helpless settlements. But now they send the pick of the navy, against their own people.
"Damned to them, that is theRainbowe. "Bedfordsquinted at the ship. "She's a first-rank man-of-war, fifty guns. She was King Charles' royal ship of war. She'll transport a good two hundred infantry."
Winston felt his stomach tighten. Could it be there'd be more
than a blockade? Had Parliament really sent the English army to invade the island?
"I'm going down to the breastwork." He glanced quickly at Katherine, then turned and began to make his way toward the gun emplacements. Edwin Spurre and the indentures were moving slowly through the early half-light, carrying kegs of powder.
"I think we can manage with these guns, Cap'n." Canninge was standing by the first cannon, his long hair matted against the sweat on his forehead. "I've cleaned out the touch holes and checked the charge delivered by the powder ladle we found. They're eighteen-pounders, culverin, and there's some shot here that ought to serve."
"Then prime and load them. On the double."
"Aye."
Using a long-handled ladle, he and the men began to shove precisely measured charges of powder, twenty pounds, into the muzzle of each cannon. The indentures were heaving round shot onto their shoulders and stacking piles beside the guns.
Winston watched the approaching sail, wondering how and why it had suddenly all come to this. Was he about to be the first man in theAmericasto fire a shot declaring war againstEngland? He looked around to see Dalby Bedford standing behind him, with Katherine at his side.
"You know what it means if we open fire on theRainbowe? I'd guess it's Cromwell's flagship now."
"I do indeed. It'd be war. I pray it'll not come to that. I'd like to try and talk with them first, if we can keep them out of the bay." The governor's face was grim. "Try once across her bow. Just a warning. Maybe she'll strike sail and let us know her business."
"Care to hold one last vote in the Assembly about this, before we fire the first shot? Something tells me it's not likely to be the last."
"We've just talked. There's no need for a vote. No man here, royalist or no, is going to stand by and just hand over this place.
We'll negotiate, but we'll not throw up our hands and surrender. There's too much at stake."
Winston nodded and turned to Canninge. "They're pulling close to range. When you're ready, lay a round across her bow. Then hold for orders."
"Aye." Canninge smiled and pointed toward a small gun at the end of the row, its dark brass glistening in the early light. "I'll use that little six-pounder. We'll save the eighteen-pounders for the work to come.
"Have you got range yet?"
"Give me a minute to set her, and I’ll wager I can lay a round shot two hundred yards in front of the bow." He turned and barked an order. Seamen hauled the tackles, rolling the gun into position. Then they levered the breech slightly upward to lower the muzzle, jamming a wooden wedge between the gun and the wooden truck to set it in position.
Winston took a deep breath, then glanced back atBedford. "This may be the most damn foolhardy thing that's ever been done."
Bedford's voice was grave. "It's on my authority."
He turned back to Canninge. "Fire when ready."
The words were swallowed in the roar as the gunner touched a piece of burning matchrope to the cannon's firing hole. Dark smoke boiled up from the muzzle, acrid in the fresh morning air. Moments later a plume erupted off the bow of the English man-of-war.
Almost as though the ship had been waiting, it veered suddenly to port. Winston realized the guns had already been run out. They'd been prepared. Puffs of black smoke blossomed out of the upper gun deck, and moments later a line of plumes shot up along the surf just below the Point.
"They fired when they dipped into a swell." Canninge laughed. "English gunnery still disappoints me."
A fearful hush dropped over the crowd, and Winston stood listening as the sound of the guns echoed over the Point. "They probably don't suspect we've got any trained gunners up here this morning. Otherwise they'd never have opened fire when they're right under our ordnance." He glanced atBedford. "You've got their reply. What's yours?"
"I suppose there's only one answer." The governor looked back and surveyed the waiting members of the Assembly. Several men removed their hats and began to confer together. Moments later they looked up and nodded. He turned back. "What can you do to her?"
"Is that authority to fire?"
"Full authority."
"Then get everybody back up the hill. Now." He watched asBedfordgave the order and the crowd began to quickly melt away. The Irish indentures waited behind Winston, refusing to move. He gestured a few of the men forward, to help set the guns, then turned back to Canninge.
"Is there range?"
"Aye, just give me a minute to set the rest of these culverin."
Winston heard a rustle of skirts by his side and knew Katherine was standing next to him. He reached out and caught her arm. "You've got a war now, Katherine, whether you wanted it or not. It'll be the first time a settlement in theAmericashas ever fired on an English ship. I guess that's the price you're going to have to pay for staying your own master. But I doubt you'll manage it."
"We just might." She reached and touched the hand on her arm. Then she turned and looked out to sea. "We have to try."
Winston glanced toward the guns. Canninge and the men had finished turning them on theRainbowe, using long wooden handspikes. Now they were adjusting the wooden wedge at the breech of each gun to set the altitude. "How does it look?"
"I know these eighteen-pounders, Cap'n, like I was born to one. At this range I could line-of-sight these whoresons any place you like."
'' How about just under the lower gun deck? At the water line? The first round better count."
"Aye, that's what I've set them for." He grinned and reached for a burning linstock. "I didn't figure we was up here to send a salute."
REVOLUTION
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 ofBarbados”
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 allEngland. 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 assertEngland's economic control of its settlements in theNew 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.Englandbelonged 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 theRainbowe.
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?"