In London there was talk that a syndicate of investors led by Sir William Courteen was recruiting a band of pioneers to try and establish a new settlement on an empty island in the Caribbees, for which they had just received a proprietary patent from the king. Though Benjamin Briggs had never heard ofBarbados, he joined the expedition. He had no family connections, no position, and only a few hundred pounds. But he had the boldness to go where no Englishman had ever ventured.Eighty of them arrived in the spring of 1627, on the William and John, with scarcely any tools, only to discover that the entire island was a rain forest, thick and overgrown. Nor had anyone expected the harsh sunshine, day in and day out. They all would have starved from inexperience had not the Dutch helped them procure a band of Arawak Indians from Surinam, who brought along seeds to grow plantains and corn, and cassava root for bread. The Indians also taught the cultivation of cotton and tobacco, cash crops. Perhaps just as importantly, they showed the new adventurers from London how to make a suspended bed they called a hammock, in order to sleep up above the island's biting ants, and how to use smoky fires to drive off the swarms of mosquitoes that appeared each night. Yet, help notwithstanding, many of those first English settlers died from exposure and disease by the end of the year. Benjamin Briggs was one of the survivors. Later, he had vowed never to forget those years, and never to taste defeat.The sun was almost gone now, throwing its last, long shadows through the open thatchwork of the curing-house walls, laying a pattern against the hard earthen floor. He looked down at his calloused hands, the speckle of light and shade against the weathered skin, and thought of all the labors he had set them to.The first three years those hands had wielded an axe, clearing land, and then they had shaped themselves to the handle of a hoe, as he and his five new indentures set about planting indigo. And those hands had stayed penniless when his indigo crops were washed away two years running by the autumn storms the Carib Indians calledhuracan. Next he had set them to cotton. In five years he had recouped the losses from the indigo and acquired more land, but he was still at the edge of starvation, in a cabin of split logs almost a decade after coming out to the Caribbees.He looked again at his hands, thinking how they had borrowed heavily from lenders inLondon, the money just enough to finance a switch from cotton to tobacco. It fared a trifle better, but still scarcely recovered its costs.Though he had managed to accumulate more and more acres of island land over the years, from neighbors less prudent, he now had only a moderate fortune to show for all his labor. He'd actually considered giving up on theAmericasand returning toLondon, to resume the import trade. But always he remembered his vow, so instead he borrowed again, this time from the Dutchmen, and risked it all one last time. On sugar.He scraped a layer from the top of one of the molds and rubbed the tan granules between his fingers, telling himself that now, at last, his hands had something to show for the two long decades of callouses, blisters, emptiness.He tasted the rich sweetness on a horned thumb and its savor was that of theAmericas. TheNew Worldwhere every man started as an equal.Now a new spirit had sweptEngland. The king was dethroned, the hereditary House of Lords abolished. The people had risen up . . . and, though you’d never have expected it, new risk had risen up with them. The American settlements were suddenly flooded with the menEnglandhad repudiated. Banished aristocrats like the Walronds, who'd bought their way intoBarbadosand who would doubtless like nothing better than to reforge the chains of class privilege in theNew World.Most ironic of all, these men had at their disposal the new democratic institutions of theAmericas. They would clamor in the Assembly of Barbados for the island to reject the governance of the English Parliament, hoping thereby to hasten its downfall and lead to the restoration of the monarchy. Worse, the Assembly, that reed in the winds of rhetoric, would doubtless acquiesce.Regardless of what you thought of Cromwell, to resist Parliament now would be to swim against the tide. And to invite war. The needful business of consolidating the small tracts onBarbadosand setting the island wholesale to sugar would be disrupted and forestalled, perhaps forever.Why had it come down to this, he asked himself again. Now, of all times. When the fruits of long labor seemed almost in hand. When you could finally taste the comforts of life—a proper house, rich food, a woman to ease the nights.He had never considered taking another wife. Once had been enough. But he had always arranged to have a comely Irish girl about the house, to save the trouble and expense of visitingBridgetownfor an evening.A prudent man bought an indentured wench with the same careful eye hed acquire a breeding mare. A lusty-looking one might cost a few shillings more, but it was money well invested, your one compensation for all the misery.The first was years ago, when he bought a red-headed one straight off a ship from London, not guessing till he got her home that he’d been swindled; she had a sure case of the pox, the French disease. Her previous career, it then came out, included Bridewell Prison and the taverns ofTurnbull Street. He sent her straight to the fields and three months later carefully bought another, this one Irish and seventeen. She had served out her time, five years, and then gone to work at a tavern inBridgetown. He had never seen her since, and didn't care to, but after that he always kept one about, sending her on to the fields and buying a replacement when he wearied of her.That was before the voyage down to Pernambuco.Brazilhad been an education, in more ways than one. You had to grant the Papists knew a thing or so about the good life. They had bred up a sensuous Latin creation: themulata. He tried one at a tavern, and immediately decided the time had come to acquire the best. He had worked hard, he told himself; he had earned it.There was no such thing as amulataindenture in Pernambuco, so he'd paid the extra cost for a slave. And he was still cursing himself for his poor judgment. Haughtiness in a servant was nothing new. In the past he'd learned you could easily thrash it out of them, even the Irish ones. Thismulata, though, somehow had the idea she was gifted by God to a special station, complete with high-born Latin airs. The plan to be finally rid of her was already in motion.She had come from Pernambuco with the first cane, and she would be sold inBridgetownwith the first sugar. He already had a prospective buyer, with an opening offer of eighty pounds.He'd even hinted to Hugh Winston that she could be takenas part payment for the sight drafts, but Winston had refused the bait. It was men and provisions, he insisted, nothing else.Winston. May God damn his eyes. . . .Footsteps sounded along the gravel pathway and he turned to examine the line of planters approaching through the dusk, all wearing dark hats and colorless doublets. As he watched them puffing up the rise of the hill, he found himself calculating how much of the arable land on the island was now controlled by himself and these eleven other members of the Council. Tom Lancaster owned twelve hundred acres of the rolling acres in St. George's parish; Nicholas Whittington had over a thousand of the best land in Christ's Church parish; Edward Bayes, who had ridden down from his new plantation house on the northern tip of the island, owned over nine hundred acres; John lynes had amassed a third of the arable coastal land on the eastern, windward side of the island. The holdings of the others were smaller, but together they easily owned the major share of the good cane land onBarbados. What they needed now was the rest."Your servant, sir." The planters nodded in chorus as they filed into the darkened curing house. Every man had ridden alone, and Briggs had ordered his own servants to keep clear of the curing house for the evening."God in heaven, this much already." Bayes emitted a low whistle and rubbed his jowls as he surveyed the long rows of sugar molds. "You've got a fortune in this very room, sir. If this all turns out to be sugar, and not just pots of molasses like before.""It'll be white sugar or I'll answer for it, and it'll be fine as anyPortugalcould make." Briggs walked to the corner of the room, returning with two flasks of kill-devil and a tray of tankards. "The question now, gentlemen, is whether we'll ever see it sold.""I don't follow you, sir." Whittington reached for a brown flask and began pouring himself a tankard. "As soon as we've all got a batch cured, we'll market it to the Dutchmen. Or we'll ship it toLondonourselves.""I suppose you've heard the rumor working now amongst the Dutchmen? That there might be an embargo?""Aye, but it's no more than a rumor. There'll be no embargo, I promise you. It'd be too costly.""It's not just a rumor. There was a letter from myLondonbroker in the mail packet that came yesterday on theRotterdam. He saw fit to include this." Briggs produced a thin roll of paper. "It's a copy he had made of the Act prepared in the Council of State, ready to be sent straight to Commons for a vote." He passed the paper to Whittington, who un-scrolled it and squinted through the half-light. Briggs paused a moment, then continued, "The Act would embargo all shipping into and out ofBarbadostill our Assembly has moved to recognize the Commonwealth. Cromwell was so sure it'd be passed he was already pulling together a fleet of warships to send out and enforce it. Word has't the fleet will be headed by theRainbowe, which was the king's flagship before Cromwell took it. Fifty guns."A disbelieving silence enveloped the darkened room."And you say this Act was set to pass in Parliament?" Whittington looked up and recovered his voice."It'd already been reported from the Council of State. And the letter was four weeks old. More'n likely it's already law. TheRainbowecould well be sailing at the head of a fleet right now as we talk.""If Cromwell does that, we're as good as on our knees." Tynes rubbed his neck and took a sip from his tankard. "What do you propose we can do?""As I see it, there're but two choices." Briggs motioned for the men to sit on a row of empty kegs he had provided. "The first is to lie back and do nothing, in which case the royalists will probably see to it that the Assembly here votes to defy Commons and declare for Charles II.""Which means we'll be at war withEngland, God help us."Lancasterremoved his hat to wipe his dusty brow."Aye. A war, incidentally, which would force Cromwell to send the army to subdue the island, if he hasn't already. He'd probably post troops to try and invade us, like some people are saying. Which means the Assembly would doubtless call up every able-bodied man on the island to fight. All the militia, and the indentures. Letting the cane rot in the fields, if it's not burned to cinders by then.""Good Jesus." Whittington's face seemed increasingly haggard in the waning light. "That could well set us back years.""Aye, and who knows what would happen with the indentures and the slaves? Who'll be able to watch over them? If we have to put the island on a war footing, it could endanger the lives of every free man here. God knows we're outnumbered by all the Irish Papists and the Africans.""Aye, the more indentures and slaves you've got, the more precarious your situation."Lancaster's glazed eyes passed down the row of sugar molds as he thought about the feeble security of his own clapboard house. He also remembered ruefully that he owned only three usable muskets."Well, gentlemen, our other choice is to face up to the situation and come to terms with Parliament. It's a bitter draught, I'll grant you, but it'll save us from anarchy, and maybe an uprising.""The Assembly'll never declare for the Commonwealth. The royalist sympathizers hold a majority." Whittington's face darkened. "Which means there's nothing to be done save ready for war.""There's still a hope. We can do something about the Assembly." Briggs turned to Tynes, a small, tanned planter with hard eyes. "How many men do you have in your regiment?""There're thirty officers, and maybe two hundred men.""How long to raise them?""Raise them, sir?" He looked at Briggs, uncomprehending. "To what purpose? They're militia, to defend us against attack by the Spaniards.""It's not the Spaniards we've to worry about now. I think we can agree there's a clear and present danger nearer to hand." Briggs looked around him. "I say the standing Assembly of Barbados no longer represents the best interests of this island. For any number of reasons.""Is there a limit on their term?"Lancasterlooked at him questioningly. "I don't remember the law.""We're not adjudicating law now, gentlemen. We're discussing the future of the island. We're facing war. But beyond that, it's time we talked about runningBarbadosthe way it should be, along economic principles. There'll be prosperity, you can count on it, but only if we've got a free hand to make some changes." He took a drink, then set down his tankard."What do you mean?"Lancasterlooked at him."Well sir, the main problem now is that we've got an Assembly here that's sympathetic to the small freeholders. Not surprisingly, since thanks to Dalby Bedford every man here with five acres can vote. Our good governor saw to that when he drew up the voting parishes. Five acres. They're not the kind who should be in charge of governing this settlement now. I know it and so does every man in this room.""All the same, they were elected.""That was before sugar. Think about it. These small freeholders on the Assembly don't understand this island wasn't settled just so we'd have a batch of five-acre gardens. God's blood, I cleared a thousand acres myself. I figured that someday I'd know why I was doing it. Well, now I do.""What are you driving at?" Bayes squinted past the rows of sugar cones."Well, examine the situation. This island could be the finest sugar plantation in the world. The Dutchmen already claim it's better thanBrazil. But the land here's got to be assembled and put to efficient use. If we can consolidate the holdings of these small freeholders, we can make this island the richest spot on earth. The Assembly doesn't understand that. They'd go to war rather than try and make some prosperity here.""What are you proposing we do about it?"Lancasterinterjected warily."What if we took action, in the interests of the island?" Briggs lowered his voice. "We can't let the Assembly vote against the Commonwealth and call down the navy on our heads. They've got to be stopped.""But how do we manage it?" Tynes' voice was uneasy."We take preventive action." He looked around the room. "Gentlemen, I say it'd be to the benefit of all the free Englishmen onBarbadosif we took the governor under our protection for the time being, which would serve to close down the Assembly while we try and talk sense with Parliament.""We'd be taking the law into our own hands." Tynes shifted uncomfortably."It's a question of whose law you mean. According to the thinking of the English Parliament, this Assembly has no legal standing anyway, since they've yet to recognize the rule of Commons. We'd just be implementing what's already been decided.""I grant you this island would be wise not to antagonize Cromwell and Parliament just now." Whittington searched the faces around him. "And if the Assembly won't take a prudent course, then . . .""What we're talking about here amounts to overturning the sitting governor, and closing down the Assembly."Lancaster's voice came through the gloom. "We've not the actual authority, even if Parliament has . . .""We've got something more, sir." Briggs met his troubled gaze. "An obligation. To protect the future of the island."What we need now, he told himself, is responsible leadership. If the Council can deliver up the island, the quid pro quo from Cromwell will have to be acting authority to governBarbados. Parliament has no brief for the Assembly here, which fits nicely with the need to be done with it anyway.The irony of it! Only ifBarbadossurrenders do we have a chance to realize some prosperity. If we stand and fight, we're sure to lose eventually, and then none of us will have any say in what comes after.And in the long run it'll be best for every man here, rich and poor. When there's wealth—as there's sure to be if we can start evicting these freeholders and convert the island over to efficient sugar plantations—everybody benefits. The wealth will trickle down, like the molasses out of these sugar cones, even to the undeserving. It's the way things have to be in theAmericasif we're ever to make a go of it.But one step at a time. First we square the matter of Bedford and the Assembly."But have we got the men?"Lancastersettled his tankard on a keg and looked up hesitantly."With the militia we already have under our command, I'd say we've got sympathetic officers, since they're all men with sizable sugar acreage. On the other hand, it'd probably not be wise to try calling up any of the small freeholders and freemen. So to get the numbers we'll be wanting, I'd say we'll just have to use our indentures as the need arises.""You've named a difficulty there." Whittington took a deep breath. "Remember the transfer over to Winston takes place day after tomorrow. That's going to leave every man here short. After that I'll have no more than half a dozen Christians on my plantation. All the rest are Africans.""Aye, he'll have the pick of my indentures as well,"Lancasteradded, his voice troubled."He'll just have to wait." Briggs emptied his tankard and reached for the flask. "We'll postpone the transfer till this thing's settled. And let Winston try to do about it what he will."Chapter SixA light breeze stirred the bedroom's jalousie shutters, sending strands of themidnightmoon dancing across the curves of her naked, almond skin. As always when she slept she was back in Pernambuco, in the whitewashed room of long ago, perfumed with frangipani, with moonlight and soft shadows that pirouetted against the clay walls.. . . Slowly, silently, the moon at the window darkens, as a shadow blossoms through the airless space, and in her dream the form becomes the ancientbabalawoof Pernambuco, hovering above her. Then something passes across her face, a reverent caress, and there is softness and scent in its touch, like a linen kerchief that hints of wild berries. The taste of its honeyed sweetness enters the dream, and she finds herself drifting deeper into sleep as his arms encircle her, drawing her up against him with soft Yoruba words.Her body seems to float, the dream deepening, its world of light and shadow absorbing her, beckoning, the softness of the bed gliding away.Now she feels the touch of her soft cotton shift against her breasts and senses the hands that lower it about her. Soon she is buoyed upward, toward the waiting moon, past the jalousies at the window, noiselessly across the rooftop. . . .She awoke as the man carrying her in his arms dropped abruptly to the yard of the compound. She looked to see the face, and for an instant she thought it truly was the old priest inBrazil... the same three clan marks, the same burning eyes. Then she realized the face was younger, that of another man, one she knew from more recent dreams. She struggled to escape, but the drugged cloth came again, its pungent, cloying sweetness sending her thoughts drifting back toward the void of the dream.. . . Now the wall of the compound floats past, vaulted by the figure who holds her draped in his arms. His Yoruba words are telling her she has the beauty of Oshun, beloved wife of Shango. That tonight they will live among the Orisa, the powerful gods that dwell in the forest and the sky. For a moment the cool night air purges away the sweetness of the drug, the potion thisbabalawohad used to numb her senses, and she is aware of the hard flex of his muscle against her body. Without thinking she clings to him, her fear and confusion mingled with the ancient comfort of his warmth, till her mind merges once more with the dark. . . .Atiba pointed down toward the wide sea that lay before them, a sparkling expanse spreading out from the shoreline at the bottom of the hill, faintly tinged with moonlight. "I brought you here tonight to make you understand something. InIfewe say: 'The darkness of night is deeper than the shadow of the forest.' Do you understand the chains on your heart can be stronger than the chains on your body?''He turned back to look at Serina, his gaze lingering over the sparkling highlights the moon now sprinkled in her hair. He found himself suddenly remembering a Yoruba woman he had loved once, not one of his wives, but a tall woman who served the royal compound atIfe. He had met with her secretly, after his wives were killed in the wars, and he still thought of her often. Something in the elegant face of thismulatabrought back those memories even more strongly. She too had been strong-willed, like this one. Was this woman also sacred to Shango, as that one had been . . . ?"You only become a slave when you give up your people. '' His voice grew gentle, almost a whisper. "What is your Yoruba name?""I'm not Yoruba." She spoke quickly and curtly, forcing the words past her anger as she huddled for warmth, legs drawn up, arms encircling her knees. Then she reached to pull her shift tighter about her and tried to clear her thoughts. The path on which hed carried her, through forests and fields, was a blurred memory. Only slowly had she realized they were on a hillside now, overlooking the sea. He was beside her, wearing only a blue shirt and loincloth, his profile outlined in the moonlight."Don't say that. The first thing you must know is who you are. Unless you understand that, you will always be a slave.""I know who I am. I'mmulata. Portugues. I'm not African." She glanced down at the grass beside her bare feet and suddenly wished her skin were whiter. I'm the color of dead leaves, she thought shamefully, of the barren earth. Then she gripped the hem of her shift and summoned back her pride. "I'm not apreto. Why would I have an African name?"She felt her anger rising up once more, purging her feelings of helplessness. To be stolen from her bed by this ignorantpreto, brought to some desolate spot with nothing but the distant sound of the sea. That he would dare to steal her away, a highborn mulata. She did not consort with blacks. She was almost . . . white.The wind laced suddenly through her hair, splaying it across her cheeks, and she realized the night air was perfumed now, almost as the cloth had been, a wild fragrance that seemed to dispel a portion of her anger, her humiliation. For a moment she found herself thinking of the forbidden things possible in the night, those hidden hours when the rules of day can be sacrificed to need. And she became aware of the warmth of his body next to hers as he crouched, waiting, motionless as the trees at the bottom of the hill.If she were his captive, then nothing he did to her would be of her own willing. How could she prevent him? Yet he made no move to take her. Why was he waiting?"But to have a Yoruba name means to possess something thebrancocan never own." He caressed her again with his glance. Even though she was pale, he had wanted her from the first moment he saw her. And he had recognized the same want in her eyes, only held in check by her pride.Why was she so proud, he wondered. If anything, she should feel shame, that her skin was so wan and pale. In Ife the women in the compounds would laugh at her, saying the moons would come and go and she would only wet her feet, barren. No man would take some frail albino to share his mat.Even more—for all her fine Ingles clothes and her soft bed she was ten times more slave than he would ever be. How to make her understand that?"You only become a slave when you give up the ways of your people. Even if your father was abranco, you were born of a Yoruba woman. You still can be Yoruba. And then you will be something, have something." The powerful hands that had carried her to this remote hilltop were now toying idly with the grass. "You are not the property of abrancounless you consent to be. To be a slave you must first submit, give him your spirit. If you refuse, if you remember your own people, he can never truly enslave you. He will have only your body, the work of your hands. The day you understand that, you are human again.""You are wrong." She straightened. "Here in theAmericasyou are whatever thebrancosays. You will never be a man unless he says you are." She noticed a tiny race in her heartbeat and told herself again she did not want to feel desire for this preto, now or ever. "Do you want to know why? Because your skin is black. And to the Ingles black is the color of evil. They have books of learning that say the Christian God made Africans black because they are born of evil; they are less than human. They say your blackness outside comes from your darkness within." She looked away, shamed once more by the shade of her own skin, her unmistakable kinship with thispretonext to her. Then she continued, bitterly repeating the things she’d heard that the Puritan divines were now saying in the island's parish churches. "The Ingles claim Africans are not men but savages, something between man and beast. And because of that, their priests declare it is the will of their God that you be slaves. . . ."She had intended to goad him more, to pour out the abusive scorn she had so often endured herself, but the softness of the Yoruba words against her tongue sounded more musical than she had wanted. He was quietly smiling as she continued. "And now I order you to take me back before Master Briggs discovers I'm gone.""The sun is many hours away. So for a while yet you won't have to see how black I am." He laughed and a pale glimmer of moonlight played across the three clan marks on his cheek. "I thought you had more understanding than is expected of a woman. Perhaps I was wrong. We say 'The thread follows the needle; it does not make its own way.' For you the Portugues, and now thisbrancoBriggs, have been the needle; you merely the thread." He grasped her shoulder and pulled her around. "Why do you let somebrancotell you who you are? I say they are the savages. They are not my color; they are sickly pale. They don't worship my gods; they pray to some cruel God who has no power over the earth. Their language is ugly and harsh; mine is melodic, rich with verses and ancient wisdom." He smiled again at the irony of it. "But tonight you have told me something very important about the mind of these Ingles. You have explained why they want so much to make me submit. If they think we are evil, then they must also think us powerful."Suddenly he leaped to his feet and joyously whirled in acircle, entoning a deep, eerie chant toward the stars. It was like a song of triumph.She sat watching till he finished, then listened to the medley of frightened night birds from the dark down the hill. How could thispretounderstand so well her own secret shame, see so clearly the lies she told herself in order to live?Abruptly he reached down and slipped his hands under her arms, lifting her up to him. "The first thing I want to do tonight is give you back a Yoruba name. A name that has meaning." He paused. "What was your mother called?""Her name was Dara.""Our word for 'beautiful.' " He studied her angular face gravely. "It would suit you as well, for truly you are beautiful too. If you took that name, it would always remind you that your mother was a woman of our people."She found herself wishing she had the strength to push his warm body away, to shout out to him one final time that he was apreto, that his father was apretoand her own abranco, that she had no desire to so much as touch him. . . . But suddenly she was ashamed to say the word "white," and that shame brought a wave of anger. At him, at herself. All her life she had been proud to bemulata. What right did this illiteratepretohave to make her feel ashamed now? "And what are you? You are apretoslave. Who brings me to a hilltop in the dark of night and brags about freedom. Tomorrow you will be a slave again, just like yesterday.""What am I?" Angrily he gripped her arms and pulled her face next to his. The fierceness of his eyes again recalled the oldbabalawoinBrazil; he had had the same pride in himself, his people. "I am more than the Ingles here are. Ask of them, and you will discover half once were criminals, or men with no lands of their own, no lineage. In my veins there is royal blood, a line hundreds of generations old. My own father was nearest the throne of the ruling Oba inIfe. He was ababalawo, as I am, but he was also a warrior. Before he was betrayed in battle, he was the second most powerful man inIfe. That's who I am, my father's son.""What happened? Was he killed?" Impulsively she took his hand and was surprised by its warmth."He disappeared one day. Many markets later I learned he was betrayed by some of our own people. Because he was too powerful in Ife. He was captured and taken down to the sea, sold to the Portugues. I was young then. I had only known twelve rainy seasons. But I was not too young to hunt down the traitors who made him slave. They all died by my sword." He clenched his fist, then slowly it relaxed. "But enough. Tonight I want just one thing. To teach you that you still can be free. That you can be Yoruba again.""Why do you want so much to change me?""Because, Dara"—his eyes were locked on hers—"I would have you be my wife. Here. I will not buy you with a bride price; instead I will kill the man who owns you."She felt a surge of confusion, entwined with want. But again her disdain of everythingpretocaught in her breast. Why, she wondered, was she even bothering to listen?"After you make me 'Yoruba,' I will still be a slave to the Ingles.""Only for a few more days." His face hardened, a tenseness that spread upward through his high cheeks and into his eyes. "Wait another moon and you will see my warriors seize this island away from them.""I'll not be one of your Yoruba wives." She drew back and clasped her arms close to her breasts, listening to the night, alive now with the sounds of whistling frogs and crickets."Rather than be wife to a Yoruba, you would be whore to an Ingles." He spat out the words. "Which means to be nothing.""But if you take this island, you can have as many wives as you like. Just as you surely have now inIfe." She drew away, still not trusting the pounding in her chest. "What does one more mean to you?""Both my wives inIfeare dead." His hand reached and stroked her hair. "They were killed by the Fulani, years ago. I never chose more, though many families offered me their young women.""Now you want war again. And death. Here.""I raised my sword against my enemies in Yorubaland. I will fight against them here. No Yoruba will ever bow to others, black or white." He gently touched her cheek and smoothed her pale skin with his warm fingers. "You can stand with us when we rise up against the Ingles."His touch tingled unexpectedly, like a bridge to some faraway time she dreamed about and still belonged to. For an instant she almost gave in to the impulse to circle her arms around him, pull him next to her.He stroked her cheek again, lovingly, before continuing. "Perhaps if I kill all the Ingles chiefs, then you will believe you are free. That your name is Dara, and not what some Portugues once decided to call you." He looked at her again and his eyes had softened now. "Will you help me?"She watched as the moonlight glistened against the ebony of his skin. Thispretoslave was opening his life to her, something no other man had ever done. Thebrancodespised his blackness even more than they did hers, but he bore their contempt with pride, with strength, more strength than she had ever before sensed in a man.And he needed her. Someone finally needed her. She saw it in his eyes, a need he was still too proud to fully admit, a hunger for her to be with him, to share the days ahead when . . .Yes. . . when she would stand with him to destroy thebranco."Together." Softly she reached up and circled her arms around his broad neck. Suddenly his blackness was exquisite and beautiful. "Tonight I will be wife to you. Will you hold me now?"The wind whipped her long black hair across his shoulder, and before she could think she found herself raising her lips to his. He tasted of the forest, of a lost world across the sea she had never known. His scent was sharp, and male.She felt his thumb brush across her cheek and sensed the wetness of her own tears. What had brought this strange welling to her eyes, here on this desolate hillside. Was it part of love? Was that what she felt now, this equal giving and accepting of each other?She shoved back his open shirt, to pass her hands across the hard muscles of his chest. Scars were there, deep, the signs of the warrior he once had been. Then she slipped the rough cotton over his back, feeling the open cuts of the lashes, the marks of the slave he was now. Suddenly she realized he wore them as proudly as sword cuts from battle. They were the emblem of his manhood, his defiance of the Ingles, just as his cheek marks were the insignia of his clan. They were proof to all that his spirit still lived.She felt his hands touch her shift, and she reached gently to stop him.Over the years inBrazilso many men had used her. She had been given to any white visitor at the plantation who wanted her: first it was Portuguese traders, ship captains, even priests. Then conquering Hollanders, officers of the Dutch forces who had takenBrazil. A hundred men, all born inEurope, all unbathed and rank, all white. She had sensed theirbrancocontempt for her with anger and shame. To this black Yoruba, this strong, proud man ofAfrica, she would give herself freely and with love.She met his gaze, then in a single motion pulled the shift over her head and tossed it away, shaking out the dark hair that fell across her shoulders. As she stood naked before him in the moonlight, the wind against her body seemed like a foretaste of the freedom, the love, he had promised.He studied her for a moment, the shadows of her firm breasts casting dark ellipses downward across her body. She wasdara.Slowly he grasped her waist and lifted her next to him. As she entwined her legs about his waist, he buried his face against her and together they laughed for joy.Later she recalled the touch of his body, the soft grass, the sounds of the night in her ears as she cried out in completeness. The first she had ever known. And at last, a perfect quiet had seemed to enfold them as she held him in her arms, his strength tame as a child's.In the mists of dawn he brought her back, through the forest, serenaded by its invisible choir of egrets and whistling frogs. He carried her home across the rooftop, to her bed, to a world no longer real."Damn me, sir, I suppose you've heard the talk. I'll tell you I fear for the worst." Johan Ruyters wiped his mouth with a calloused hand and shoved his tankard across the table, motioning for a refill. The Great Cabin of theDefiancewas a mosaic of flickering shadows, lighted only by the swaying candle-lantern over the large oak table. "It could well be the end of Dutch trade in all the English settlements, from here toVirginia.""I suppose there's a chance. Who can say?" Winston reached for the flask of sack and passed it over. He was exhausted, but his mind was taut with anticipation. Almost ready, he told himself; you'll be gone before the island explodes. There's only one last thing you need: a seasoned pilot forJamaicaBay. "One of the stories I hear is that ifBarbadosdoesn't swear allegiance to Parliament, there may be a blockade.""Aye, but that can't last long. And frankly speaking, it matters little to me who governs this damned island, Parliament or its own Assembly." He waved his hand, then his look darkened. "No, it's this word about some kind of Navigation Act that troubles me.""You mean the story that Parliament's thinking of passing an Act restricting trade in all the American settlements to English bottoms?""Aye, and let's all pray it's not true. But we hear the damnedLondonmerchants are pushing for it. We've sowed, and now they'd be the ones to reap.""What do you think you'll do?""Do, sir? I'd say there's little wecando. TheLow Countriesdon't want war withEngland. Though that's what it all may lead to ifLondontries stopping free trade." He glanced around the timbered cabin: there was a sternchaser cannon lashed to blocks just inside the large windows aft and a locked rack of muskets and pistols secured forward. Why had Winston invited him aboard tonight? They had despised each other from the first. "The better part of our trade in theNew Worldnow's withVirginiaandBermuda, along withBarbadosand St. Christopher down here in the Caribbees. It'll ruin every captain I know if we're barred from ports in the English settlements.""Well, the way things look now, you'd probably be wise just to weigh anchor and make for open sea, before there's any trouble here. Assuming your sight drafts are all in order. ''"Aye, they're signed. But now I'm wondering if I'll ever see them settled." He leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his thinning gray hair. "I've finished scrubbing down theZeelanderand started lading in some cotton. This was going to be my best run yet. God damn Cromwell and his army. As long as the Civil War was going on, nobody inLondontook much notice of theAmericas.""True enough. You Hollanders got rich, since there was scarcely any English shipping. But in a way it'll be your own fault ifBarbadoshas to knuckle under now toEnglandand English merchants.""I don't follow you, sir." Ruyters regarded him questioningly."It'd be a lot easier for them to stand and fight if they didn't have these new slaves you sold them.""That's a most peculiar idea, sir." He frowned. "How do you see that?"Winston rose and strolled aft to the stern windows, studying the leaded glass for a moment before unlatching one frame and swinging it out. A gust of cool air washed across his face. "You Hollanders have sold them several thousand Africans who'd probably just as soon see the island turned back to a forest. So they'll be facing the English navy offshore, with a bunch of African warriors at their backs. I don't see how they can man both fronts.""That's a curious bit of speculation, sir. Which I'm not sure I'd be ready to grant you. But it scarcely matters now." Ruyters stared down at the table. "So what do you think's likely to happen?""My guess is the Assembly'll not surrender the island to Cromwell without a fight. There's too much royalist sentiment there." He looked back at Ruyters. "If there's a blockade, or if Cromwell tries to land English forces, I'd wager they'll call up the militia and shoot back.""But they've nothing to fight with. Scarcely any ordnance worth the name.""That's what I'm counting on." Winston's eyes sobered."What do you mean, sir?""It's the poor man that remembers best who once lent him a shilling. I figure that anybody who helps them now will be remembered here in the days to come, regardless of how this turns out.""Why in the name of hell would you bother helping them? No man with his wits about him wants to get caught in this, not if he's looking to his own interests.""I'll look to my interests as I see fit." Winston glanced back. "And you can do the same.""Aye, to be sure. I intend to. But what would you be doing getting mixed up in this trouble? There'll be powder and shot spent before it's over, sir, or I'm not a Christian.""I figure there's today. And then there's tomorrow, when this island's going to be a sugar factory. And they'll need shippers. They won't forget who stood by them. If I pitch in a bit now—maybe help them fortify the Point, for instance—I'll have first call. I'm thinking of buying another bottom, just for sugar." He looked at Ruyters and laughed. "Why should all the new sugar profits go to you damned Butterboxes? ''"Well, sir, you're not under my command anymore. I can't stop you from trying." The Dutchman cleared his throat noisily. "But they'd not forget so soon who's stood by them through all the years. Ask any planter here and he'll tell you we've kept this island, and all the rest of the English settlements, from starving for the last twenty years." He took a swallow from his tankard, then settled it down thoughtfully. "Though mind you, we needed them too.Englandhad the spare people to settle theAmericas, which theLow Countriesnever had, but we've had the bottoms to ship them what they need. It's been a perfect partnership." He looked back at Winston. "What exactly do you think you can do, I mean this business about fortifying the Point?""Just a little arrangement I'm making with some members of the Assembly.""I'm asking you as one gentleman to another, sir. Plain as that."Winston paused a few moments, then walked back from the window. The lantern light played across his lined face. "As a gentleman, then. Between us I'm thinking I'll off-load some of the ordnance on theDefianceand move it up to the Point. I've got twice the cannon on board that they've got in place there. I figure I might also spare them a few budge-barrels of powder and some round shot if they need it.""I suppose I see your thinking." Ruyters frowned and drank again. "But it's a fool's errand, for all that. Even if they could manage to put up a fight, how long can they last? They're isolated.""Who can say? But I hear there's talk in the Assembly about trying to form an alliance of all the American settlements. They figureVirginiaandBermudamight join with them. Everybody would, except maybe the Puritans up in NewEngland, who doubtless can be counted on to side with the hotheads in Parliament.""And I say the devil take those New Englanders. They've started shipping produce in their own bottoms, shutting us out. I've seen their flags carrying lumber to the Canaries andMadeira; they're even sending fish toPortugalandSpainnow. When a few years past we were all but keeping them alive. Ten years ago they even made Dutch coin legal tender inMassachusetts, since we handled the better part of their trade. But now I say the hell with them." His face turned hopeful. "But if there was an alliance of the other English settlements, I'll wager there'd be a chance they might manage to stand up to Cromwell for a while. Or at least hold out for terms, like you say. They need our shipping as much as we need them.""I've heard talkBermudamay be in favor of it. Nobody knows aboutVirginia." Winston drank from his tankard. "But for now, the need's right here. At least that's what I'm counting on. If I can help them hold out, they'll remember who stood by them. Anyway, I've got nothing to lose, except maybe a few culverin."
In London there was talk that a syndicate of investors led by Sir William Courteen was recruiting a band of pioneers to try and establish a new settlement on an empty island in the Caribbees, for which they had just received a proprietary patent from the king. Though Benjamin Briggs had never heard ofBarbados, he joined the expedition. He had no family connections, no position, and only a few hundred pounds. But he had the boldness to go where no Englishman had ever ventured.
Eighty of them arrived in the spring of 1627, on the William and John, with scarcely any tools, only to discover that the entire island was a rain forest, thick and overgrown. Nor had anyone expected the harsh sunshine, day in and day out. They all would have starved from inexperience had not the Dutch helped them procure a band of Arawak Indians from Surinam, who brought along seeds to grow plantains and corn, and cassava root for bread. The Indians also taught the cultivation of cotton and tobacco, cash crops. Perhaps just as importantly, they showed the new adventurers from London how to make a suspended bed they called a hammock, in order to sleep up above the island's biting ants, and how to use smoky fires to drive off the swarms of mosquitoes that appeared each night. Yet, help notwithstanding, many of those first English settlers died from exposure and disease by the end of the year. Benjamin Briggs was one of the survivors. Later, he had vowed never to forget those years, and never to taste defeat.
The sun was almost gone now, throwing its last, long shadows through the open thatchwork of the curing-house walls, laying a pattern against the hard earthen floor. He looked down at his calloused hands, the speckle of light and shade against the weathered skin, and thought of all the labors he had set them to.
The first three years those hands had wielded an axe, clearing land, and then they had shaped themselves to the handle of a hoe, as he and his five new indentures set about planting indigo. And those hands had stayed penniless when his indigo crops were washed away two years running by the autumn storms the Carib Indians calledhuracan. Next he had set them to cotton. In five years he had recouped the losses from the indigo and acquired more land, but he was still at the edge of starvation, in a cabin of split logs almost a decade after coming out to the Caribbees.
He looked again at his hands, thinking how they had borrowed heavily from lenders inLondon, the money just enough to finance a switch from cotton to tobacco. It fared a trifle better, but still scarcely recovered its costs.
Though he had managed to accumulate more and more acres of island land over the years, from neighbors less prudent, he now had only a moderate fortune to show for all his labor. He'd actually considered giving up on theAmericasand returning toLondon, to resume the import trade. But always he remembered his vow, so instead he borrowed again, this time from the Dutchmen, and risked it all one last time. On sugar.
He scraped a layer from the top of one of the molds and rubbed the tan granules between his fingers, telling himself that now, at last, his hands had something to show for the two long decades of callouses, blisters, emptiness.
He tasted the rich sweetness on a horned thumb and its savor was that of theAmericas. TheNew Worldwhere every man started as an equal.
Now a new spirit had sweptEngland. The king was dethroned, the hereditary House of Lords abolished. The people had risen up . . . and, though you’d never have expected it, new risk had risen up with them. The American settlements were suddenly flooded with the menEnglandhad repudiated. Banished aristocrats like the Walronds, who'd bought their way intoBarbadosand who would doubtless like nothing better than to reforge the chains of class privilege in theNew World.
Most ironic of all, these men had at their disposal the new democratic institutions of theAmericas. They would clamor in the Assembly of Barbados for the island to reject the governance of the English Parliament, hoping thereby to hasten its downfall and lead to the restoration of the monarchy. Worse, the Assembly, that reed in the winds of rhetoric, would doubtless acquiesce.
Regardless of what you thought of Cromwell, to resist Parliament now would be to swim against the tide. And to invite war. The needful business of consolidating the small tracts onBarbadosand setting the island wholesale to sugar would be disrupted and forestalled, perhaps forever.
Why had it come down to this, he asked himself again. Now, of all times. When the fruits of long labor seemed almost in hand. When you could finally taste the comforts of life—a proper house, rich food, a woman to ease the nights.
He had never considered taking another wife. Once had been enough. But he had always arranged to have a comely Irish girl about the house, to save the trouble and expense of visitingBridgetownfor an evening.
A prudent man bought an indentured wench with the same careful eye hed acquire a breeding mare. A lusty-looking one might cost a few shillings more, but it was money well invested, your one compensation for all the misery.
The first was years ago, when he bought a red-headed one straight off a ship from London, not guessing till he got her home that he’d been swindled; she had a sure case of the pox, the French disease. Her previous career, it then came out, included Bridewell Prison and the taverns ofTurnbull Street. He sent her straight to the fields and three months later carefully bought another, this one Irish and seventeen. She had served out her time, five years, and then gone to work at a tavern inBridgetown. He had never seen her since, and didn't care to, but after that he always kept one about, sending her on to the fields and buying a replacement when he wearied of her.
That was before the voyage down to Pernambuco.Brazilhad been an education, in more ways than one. You had to grant the Papists knew a thing or so about the good life. They had bred up a sensuous Latin creation: themulata. He tried one at a tavern, and immediately decided the time had come to acquire the best. He had worked hard, he told himself; he had earned it.
There was no such thing as amulataindenture in Pernambuco, so he'd paid the extra cost for a slave. And he was still cursing himself for his poor judgment. Haughtiness in a servant was nothing new. In the past he'd learned you could easily thrash it out of them, even the Irish ones. Thismulata, though, somehow had the idea she was gifted by God to a special station, complete with high-born Latin airs. The plan to be finally rid of her was already in motion.
She had come from Pernambuco with the first cane, and she would be sold inBridgetownwith the first sugar. He already had a prospective buyer, with an opening offer of eighty pounds.
He'd even hinted to Hugh Winston that she could be taken
as part payment for the sight drafts, but Winston had refused the bait. It was men and provisions, he insisted, nothing else.
Winston. May God damn his eyes. . . .
Footsteps sounded along the gravel pathway and he turned to examine the line of planters approaching through the dusk, all wearing dark hats and colorless doublets. As he watched them puffing up the rise of the hill, he found himself calculating how much of the arable land on the island was now controlled by himself and these eleven other members of the Council. Tom Lancaster owned twelve hundred acres of the rolling acres in St. George's parish; Nicholas Whittington had over a thousand of the best land in Christ's Church parish; Edward Bayes, who had ridden down from his new plantation house on the northern tip of the island, owned over nine hundred acres; John lynes had amassed a third of the arable coastal land on the eastern, windward side of the island. The holdings of the others were smaller, but together they easily owned the major share of the good cane land onBarbados. What they needed now was the rest.
"Your servant, sir." The planters nodded in chorus as they filed into the darkened curing house. Every man had ridden alone, and Briggs had ordered his own servants to keep clear of the curing house for the evening.
"God in heaven, this much already." Bayes emitted a low whistle and rubbed his jowls as he surveyed the long rows of sugar molds. "You've got a fortune in this very room, sir. If this all turns out to be sugar, and not just pots of molasses like before."
"It'll be white sugar or I'll answer for it, and it'll be fine as anyPortugalcould make." Briggs walked to the corner of the room, returning with two flasks of kill-devil and a tray of tankards. "The question now, gentlemen, is whether we'll ever see it sold."
"I don't follow you, sir." Whittington reached for a brown flask and began pouring himself a tankard. "As soon as we've all got a batch cured, we'll market it to the Dutchmen. Or we'll ship it toLondonourselves."
"I suppose you've heard the rumor working now amongst the Dutchmen? That there might be an embargo?"
"Aye, but it's no more than a rumor. There'll be no embargo, I promise you. It'd be too costly."
"It's not just a rumor. There was a letter from myLondonbroker in the mail packet that came yesterday on theRotterdam. He saw fit to include this." Briggs produced a thin roll of paper. "It's a copy he had made of the Act prepared in the Council of State, ready to be sent straight to Commons for a vote." He passed the paper to Whittington, who un-scrolled it and squinted through the half-light. Briggs paused a moment, then continued, "The Act would embargo all shipping into and out ofBarbadostill our Assembly has moved to recognize the Commonwealth. Cromwell was so sure it'd be passed he was already pulling together a fleet of warships to send out and enforce it. Word has't the fleet will be headed by theRainbowe, which was the king's flagship before Cromwell took it. Fifty guns."
A disbelieving silence enveloped the darkened room.
"And you say this Act was set to pass in Parliament?" Whittington looked up and recovered his voice.
"It'd already been reported from the Council of State. And the letter was four weeks old. More'n likely it's already law. TheRainbowecould well be sailing at the head of a fleet right now as we talk."
"If Cromwell does that, we're as good as on our knees." Tynes rubbed his neck and took a sip from his tankard. "What do you propose we can do?"
"As I see it, there're but two choices." Briggs motioned for the men to sit on a row of empty kegs he had provided. "The first is to lie back and do nothing, in which case the royalists will probably see to it that the Assembly here votes to defy Commons and declare for Charles II."
"Which means we'll be at war withEngland, God help us."Lancasterremoved his hat to wipe his dusty brow.
"Aye. A war, incidentally, which would force Cromwell to send the army to subdue the island, if he hasn't already. He'd probably post troops to try and invade us, like some people are saying. Which means the Assembly would doubtless call up every able-bodied man on the island to fight. All the militia, and the indentures. Letting the cane rot in the fields, if it's not burned to cinders by then."
"Good Jesus." Whittington's face seemed increasingly haggard in the waning light. "That could well set us back years."
"Aye, and who knows what would happen with the indentures and the slaves? Who'll be able to watch over them? If we have to put the island on a war footing, it could endanger the lives of every free man here. God knows we're outnumbered by all the Irish Papists and the Africans."
"Aye, the more indentures and slaves you've got, the more precarious your situation."Lancaster's glazed eyes passed down the row of sugar molds as he thought about the feeble security of his own clapboard house. He also remembered ruefully that he owned only three usable muskets.
"Well, gentlemen, our other choice is to face up to the situation and come to terms with Parliament. It's a bitter draught, I'll grant you, but it'll save us from anarchy, and maybe an uprising."
"The Assembly'll never declare for the Commonwealth. The royalist sympathizers hold a majority." Whittington's face darkened. "Which means there's nothing to be done save ready for war."
"There's still a hope. We can do something about the Assembly." Briggs turned to Tynes, a small, tanned planter with hard eyes. "How many men do you have in your regiment?"
"There're thirty officers, and maybe two hundred men."
"How long to raise them?"
"Raise them, sir?" He looked at Briggs, uncomprehending. "To what purpose? They're militia, to defend us against attack by the Spaniards."
"It's not the Spaniards we've to worry about now. I think we can agree there's a clear and present danger nearer to hand." Briggs looked around him. "I say the standing Assembly of Barbados no longer represents the best interests of this island. For any number of reasons."
"Is there a limit on their term?"Lancasterlooked at him questioningly. "I don't remember the law."
"We're not adjudicating law now, gentlemen. We're discussing the future of the island. We're facing war. But beyond that, it's time we talked about runningBarbadosthe way it should be, along economic principles. There'll be prosperity, you can count on it, but only if we've got a free hand to make some changes." He took a drink, then set down his tankard.
"What do you mean?"Lancasterlooked at him.
"Well sir, the main problem now is that we've got an Assembly here that's sympathetic to the small freeholders. Not surprisingly, since thanks to Dalby Bedford every man here with five acres can vote. Our good governor saw to that when he drew up the voting parishes. Five acres. They're not the kind who should be in charge of governing this settlement now. I know it and so does every man in this room."
"All the same, they were elected."
"That was before sugar. Think about it. These small freeholders on the Assembly don't understand this island wasn't settled just so we'd have a batch of five-acre gardens. God's blood, I cleared a thousand acres myself. I figured that someday I'd know why I was doing it. Well, now I do."
"What are you driving at?" Bayes squinted past the rows of sugar cones.
"Well, examine the situation. This island could be the finest sugar plantation in the world. The Dutchmen already claim it's better thanBrazil. But the land here's got to be assembled and put to efficient use. If we can consolidate the holdings of these small freeholders, we can make this island the richest spot on earth. The Assembly doesn't understand that. They'd go to war rather than try and make some prosperity here."
"What are you proposing we do about it?"Lancasterinterjected warily.
"What if we took action, in the interests of the island?" Briggs lowered his voice. "We can't let the Assembly vote against the Commonwealth and call down the navy on our heads. They've got to be stopped."
"But how do we manage it?" Tynes' voice was uneasy.
"We take preventive action." He looked around the room. "Gentlemen, I say it'd be to the benefit of all the free Englishmen onBarbadosif we took the governor under our protection for the time being, which would serve to close down the Assembly while we try and talk sense with Parliament."
"We'd be taking the law into our own hands." Tynes shifted uncomfortably.
"It's a question of whose law you mean. According to the thinking of the English Parliament, this Assembly has no legal standing anyway, since they've yet to recognize the rule of Commons. We'd just be implementing what's already been decided."
"I grant you this island would be wise not to antagonize Cromwell and Parliament just now." Whittington searched the faces around him. "And if the Assembly won't take a prudent course, then . . ."
"What we're talking about here amounts to overturning the sitting governor, and closing down the Assembly."Lancaster's voice came through the gloom. "We've not the actual authority, even if Parliament has . . ."
"We've got something more, sir." Briggs met his troubled gaze. "An obligation. To protect the future of the island."
What we need now, he told himself, is responsible leadership. If the Council can deliver up the island, the quid pro quo from Cromwell will have to be acting authority to governBarbados. Parliament has no brief for the Assembly here, which fits nicely with the need to be done with it anyway.
The irony of it! Only ifBarbadossurrenders do we have a chance to realize some prosperity. If we stand and fight, we're sure to lose eventually, and then none of us will have any say in what comes after.
And in the long run it'll be best for every man here, rich and poor. When there's wealth—as there's sure to be if we can start evicting these freeholders and convert the island over to efficient sugar plantations—everybody benefits. The wealth will trickle down, like the molasses out of these sugar cones, even to the undeserving. It's the way things have to be in theAmericasif we're ever to make a go of it.
But one step at a time. First we square the matter of Bedford and the Assembly.
"But have we got the men?"Lancastersettled his tankard on a keg and looked up hesitantly.
"With the militia we already have under our command, I'd say we've got sympathetic officers, since they're all men with sizable sugar acreage. On the other hand, it'd probably not be wise to try calling up any of the small freeholders and freemen. So to get the numbers we'll be wanting, I'd say we'll just have to use our indentures as the need arises."
"You've named a difficulty there." Whittington took a deep breath. "Remember the transfer over to Winston takes place day after tomorrow. That's going to leave every man here short. After that I'll have no more than half a dozen Christians on my plantation. All the rest are Africans."
"Aye, he'll have the pick of my indentures as well,"Lancasteradded, his voice troubled.
"He'll just have to wait." Briggs emptied his tankard and reached for the flask. "We'll postpone the transfer till this thing's settled. And let Winston try to do about it what he will."
A light breeze stirred the bedroom's jalousie shutters, sending strands of themidnightmoon dancing across the curves of her naked, almond skin. As always when she slept she was back in Pernambuco, in the whitewashed room of long ago, perfumed with frangipani, with moonlight and soft shadows that pirouetted against the clay walls.
. . . Slowly, silently, the moon at the window darkens, as a shadow blossoms through the airless space, and in her dream the form becomes the ancientbabalawoof Pernambuco, hovering above her. Then something passes across her face, a reverent caress, and there is softness and scent in its touch, like a linen kerchief that hints of wild berries. The taste of its honeyed sweetness enters the dream, and she finds herself drifting deeper into sleep as his arms encircle her, drawing her up against him with soft Yoruba words.
Her body seems to float, the dream deepening, its world of light and shadow absorbing her, beckoning, the softness of the bed gliding away.
Now she feels the touch of her soft cotton shift against her breasts and senses the hands that lower it about her. Soon she is buoyed upward, toward the waiting moon, past the jalousies at the window, noiselessly across the rooftop. . . .
She awoke as the man carrying her in his arms dropped abruptly to the yard of the compound. She looked to see the face, and for an instant she thought it truly was the old priest inBrazil... the same three clan marks, the same burning eyes. Then she realized the face was younger, that of another man, one she knew from more recent dreams. She struggled to escape, but the drugged cloth came again, its pungent, cloying sweetness sending her thoughts drifting back toward the void of the dream.
. . . Now the wall of the compound floats past, vaulted by the figure who holds her draped in his arms. His Yoruba words are telling her she has the beauty of Oshun, beloved wife of Shango. That tonight they will live among the Orisa, the powerful gods that dwell in the forest and the sky. For a moment the cool night air purges away the sweetness of the drug, the potion thisbabalawohad used to numb her senses, and she is aware of the hard flex of his muscle against her body. Without thinking she clings to him, her fear and confusion mingled with the ancient comfort of his warmth, till her mind merges once more with the dark. . . .
Atiba pointed down toward the wide sea that lay before them, a sparkling expanse spreading out from the shoreline at the bottom of the hill, faintly tinged with moonlight. "I brought you here tonight to make you understand something. InIfewe say: 'The darkness of night is deeper than the shadow of the forest.' Do you understand the chains on your heart can be stronger than the chains on your body?''
He turned back to look at Serina, his gaze lingering over the sparkling highlights the moon now sprinkled in her hair. He found himself suddenly remembering a Yoruba woman he had loved once, not one of his wives, but a tall woman who served the royal compound atIfe. He had met with her secretly, after his wives were killed in the wars, and he still thought of her often. Something in the elegant face of thismulatabrought back those memories even more strongly. She too had been strong-willed, like this one. Was this woman also sacred to Shango, as that one had been . . . ?
"You only become a slave when you give up your people. '' His voice grew gentle, almost a whisper. "What is your Yoruba name?"
"I'm not Yoruba." She spoke quickly and curtly, forcing the words past her anger as she huddled for warmth, legs drawn up, arms encircling her knees. Then she reached to pull her shift tighter about her and tried to clear her thoughts. The path on which hed carried her, through forests and fields, was a blurred memory. Only slowly had she realized they were on a hillside now, overlooking the sea. He was beside her, wearing only a blue shirt and loincloth, his profile outlined in the moonlight.
"Don't say that. The first thing you must know is who you are. Unless you understand that, you will always be a slave."
"I know who I am. I'mmulata. Portugues. I'm not African." She glanced down at the grass beside her bare feet and suddenly wished her skin were whiter. I'm the color of dead leaves, she thought shamefully, of the barren earth. Then she gripped the hem of her shift and summoned back her pride. "I'm not apreto. Why would I have an African name?"
She felt her anger rising up once more, purging her feelings of helplessness. To be stolen from her bed by this ignorantpreto, brought to some desolate spot with nothing but the distant sound of the sea. That he would dare to steal her away, a highborn mulata. She did not consort with blacks. She was almost . . . white.
The wind laced suddenly through her hair, splaying it across her cheeks, and she realized the night air was perfumed now, almost as the cloth had been, a wild fragrance that seemed to dispel a portion of her anger, her humiliation. For a moment she found herself thinking of the forbidden things possible in the night, those hidden hours when the rules of day can be sacrificed to need. And she became aware of the warmth of his body next to hers as he crouched, waiting, motionless as the trees at the bottom of the hill.
If she were his captive, then nothing he did to her would be of her own willing. How could she prevent him? Yet he made no move to take her. Why was he waiting?
"But to have a Yoruba name means to possess something thebrancocan never own." He caressed her again with his glance. Even though she was pale, he had wanted her from the first moment he saw her. And he had recognized the same want in her eyes, only held in check by her pride.
Why was she so proud, he wondered. If anything, she should feel shame, that her skin was so wan and pale. In Ife the women in the compounds would laugh at her, saying the moons would come and go and she would only wet her feet, barren. No man would take some frail albino to share his mat.
Even more—for all her fine Ingles clothes and her soft bed she was ten times more slave than he would ever be. How to make her understand that?
"You only become a slave when you give up the ways of your people. Even if your father was abranco, you were born of a Yoruba woman. You still can be Yoruba. And then you will be something, have something." The powerful hands that had carried her to this remote hilltop were now toying idly with the grass. "You are not the property of abrancounless you consent to be. To be a slave you must first submit, give him your spirit. If you refuse, if you remember your own people, he can never truly enslave you. He will have only your body, the work of your hands. The day you understand that, you are human again."
"You are wrong." She straightened. "Here in theAmericasyou are whatever thebrancosays. You will never be a man unless he says you are." She noticed a tiny race in her heartbeat and told herself again she did not want to feel desire for this preto, now or ever. "Do you want to know why? Because your skin is black. And to the Ingles black is the color of evil. They have books of learning that say the Christian God made Africans black because they are born of evil; they are less than human. They say your blackness outside comes from your darkness within." She looked away, shamed once more by the shade of her own skin, her unmistakable kinship with thispretonext to her. Then she continued, bitterly repeating the things she’d heard that the Puritan divines were now saying in the island's parish churches. "The Ingles claim Africans are not men but savages, something between man and beast. And because of that, their priests declare it is the will of their God that you be slaves. . . ."
She had intended to goad him more, to pour out the abusive scorn she had so often endured herself, but the softness of the Yoruba words against her tongue sounded more musical than she had wanted. He was quietly smiling as she continued. "And now I order you to take me back before Master Briggs discovers I'm gone."
"The sun is many hours away. So for a while yet you won't have to see how black I am." He laughed and a pale glimmer of moonlight played across the three clan marks on his cheek. "I thought you had more understanding than is expected of a woman. Perhaps I was wrong. We say 'The thread follows the needle; it does not make its own way.' For you the Portugues, and now thisbrancoBriggs, have been the needle; you merely the thread." He grasped her shoulder and pulled her around. "Why do you let somebrancotell you who you are? I say they are the savages. They are not my color; they are sickly pale. They don't worship my gods; they pray to some cruel God who has no power over the earth. Their language is ugly and harsh; mine is melodic, rich with verses and ancient wisdom." He smiled again at the irony of it. "But tonight you have told me something very important about the mind of these Ingles. You have explained why they want so much to make me submit. If they think we are evil, then they must also think us powerful."
Suddenly he leaped to his feet and joyously whirled in a
circle, entoning a deep, eerie chant toward the stars. It was like a song of triumph.
She sat watching till he finished, then listened to the medley of frightened night birds from the dark down the hill. How could thispretounderstand so well her own secret shame, see so clearly the lies she told herself in order to live?
Abruptly he reached down and slipped his hands under her arms, lifting her up to him. "The first thing I want to do tonight is give you back a Yoruba name. A name that has meaning." He paused. "What was your mother called?"
"Her name was Dara."
"Our word for 'beautiful.' " He studied her angular face gravely. "It would suit you as well, for truly you are beautiful too. If you took that name, it would always remind you that your mother was a woman of our people."
She found herself wishing she had the strength to push his warm body away, to shout out to him one final time that he was apreto, that his father was apretoand her own abranco, that she had no desire to so much as touch him. . . . But suddenly she was ashamed to say the word "white," and that shame brought a wave of anger. At him, at herself. All her life she had been proud to bemulata. What right did this illiteratepretohave to make her feel ashamed now? "And what are you? You are apretoslave. Who brings me to a hilltop in the dark of night and brags about freedom. Tomorrow you will be a slave again, just like yesterday."
"What am I?" Angrily he gripped her arms and pulled her face next to his. The fierceness of his eyes again recalled the oldbabalawoinBrazil; he had had the same pride in himself, his people. "I am more than the Ingles here are. Ask of them, and you will discover half once were criminals, or men with no lands of their own, no lineage. In my veins there is royal blood, a line hundreds of generations old. My own father was nearest the throne of the ruling Oba inIfe. He was ababalawo, as I am, but he was also a warrior. Before he was betrayed in battle, he was the second most powerful man inIfe. That's who I am, my father's son."
"What happened? Was he killed?" Impulsively she took his hand and was surprised by its warmth.
"He disappeared one day. Many markets later I learned he was betrayed by some of our own people. Because he was too powerful in Ife. He was captured and taken down to the sea, sold to the Portugues. I was young then. I had only known twelve rainy seasons. But I was not too young to hunt down the traitors who made him slave. They all died by my sword." He clenched his fist, then slowly it relaxed. "But enough. Tonight I want just one thing. To teach you that you still can be free. That you can be Yoruba again."
"Why do you want so much to change me?"
"Because, Dara"—his eyes were locked on hers—"I would have you be my wife. Here. I will not buy you with a bride price; instead I will kill the man who owns you."
She felt a surge of confusion, entwined with want. But again her disdain of everythingpretocaught in her breast. Why, she wondered, was she even bothering to listen?
"After you make me 'Yoruba,' I will still be a slave to the Ingles."
"Only for a few more days." His face hardened, a tenseness that spread upward through his high cheeks and into his eyes. "Wait another moon and you will see my warriors seize this island away from them."
"I'll not be one of your Yoruba wives." She drew back and clasped her arms close to her breasts, listening to the night, alive now with the sounds of whistling frogs and crickets.
"Rather than be wife to a Yoruba, you would be whore to an Ingles." He spat out the words. "Which means to be nothing."
"But if you take this island, you can have as many wives as you like. Just as you surely have now inIfe." She drew away, still not trusting the pounding in her chest. "What does one more mean to you?"
"Both my wives inIfeare dead." His hand reached and stroked her hair. "They were killed by the Fulani, years ago. I never chose more, though many families offered me their young women."
"Now you want war again. And death. Here."
"I raised my sword against my enemies in Yorubaland. I will fight against them here. No Yoruba will ever bow to others, black or white." He gently touched her cheek and smoothed her pale skin with his warm fingers. "You can stand with us when we rise up against the Ingles."
His touch tingled unexpectedly, like a bridge to some faraway time she dreamed about and still belonged to. For an instant she almost gave in to the impulse to circle her arms around him, pull him next to her.
He stroked her cheek again, lovingly, before continuing. "Perhaps if I kill all the Ingles chiefs, then you will believe you are free. That your name is Dara, and not what some Portugues once decided to call you." He looked at her again and his eyes had softened now. "Will you help me?"
She watched as the moonlight glistened against the ebony of his skin. Thispretoslave was opening his life to her, something no other man had ever done. Thebrancodespised his blackness even more than they did hers, but he bore their contempt with pride, with strength, more strength than she had ever before sensed in a man.
And he needed her. Someone finally needed her. She saw it in his eyes, a need he was still too proud to fully admit, a hunger for her to be with him, to share the days ahead when . . .
. . . when she would stand with him to destroy thebranco.
"Together." Softly she reached up and circled her arms around his broad neck. Suddenly his blackness was exquisite and beautiful. "Tonight I will be wife to you. Will you hold me now?"
The wind whipped her long black hair across his shoulder, and before she could think she found herself raising her lips to his. He tasted of the forest, of a lost world across the sea she had never known. His scent was sharp, and male.
She felt his thumb brush across her cheek and sensed the wetness of her own tears. What had brought this strange welling to her eyes, here on this desolate hillside. Was it part of love? Was that what she felt now, this equal giving and accepting of each other?
She shoved back his open shirt, to pass her hands across the hard muscles of his chest. Scars were there, deep, the signs of the warrior he once had been. Then she slipped the rough cotton over his back, feeling the open cuts of the lashes, the marks of the slave he was now. Suddenly she realized he wore them as proudly as sword cuts from battle. They were the emblem of his manhood, his defiance of the Ingles, just as his cheek marks were the insignia of his clan. They were proof to all that his spirit still lived.
She felt his hands touch her shift, and she reached gently to stop him.
Over the years inBrazilso many men had used her. She had been given to any white visitor at the plantation who wanted her: first it was Portuguese traders, ship captains, even priests. Then conquering Hollanders, officers of the Dutch forces who had takenBrazil. A hundred men, all born inEurope, all unbathed and rank, all white. She had sensed theirbrancocontempt for her with anger and shame. To this black Yoruba, this strong, proud man ofAfrica, she would give herself freely and with love.
She met his gaze, then in a single motion pulled the shift over her head and tossed it away, shaking out the dark hair that fell across her shoulders. As she stood naked before him in the moonlight, the wind against her body seemed like a foretaste of the freedom, the love, he had promised.
He studied her for a moment, the shadows of her firm breasts casting dark ellipses downward across her body. She wasdara.
Slowly he grasped her waist and lifted her next to him. As she entwined her legs about his waist, he buried his face against her and together they laughed for joy.
Later she recalled the touch of his body, the soft grass, the sounds of the night in her ears as she cried out in completeness. The first she had ever known. And at last, a perfect quiet had seemed to enfold them as she held him in her arms, his strength tame as a child's.
In the mists of dawn he brought her back, through the forest, serenaded by its invisible choir of egrets and whistling frogs. He carried her home across the rooftop, to her bed, to a world no longer real.
"Damn me, sir, I suppose you've heard the talk. I'll tell you I fear for the worst." Johan Ruyters wiped his mouth with a calloused hand and shoved his tankard across the table, motioning for a refill. The Great Cabin of theDefiancewas a mosaic of flickering shadows, lighted only by the swaying candle-lantern over the large oak table. "It could well be the end of Dutch trade in all the English settlements, from here toVirginia."
"I suppose there's a chance. Who can say?" Winston reached for the flask of sack and passed it over. He was exhausted, but his mind was taut with anticipation. Almost ready, he told himself; you'll be gone before the island explodes. There's only one last thing you need: a seasoned pilot forJamaicaBay. "One of the stories I hear is that ifBarbadosdoesn't swear allegiance to Parliament, there may be a blockade."
"Aye, but that can't last long. And frankly speaking, it matters little to me who governs this damned island, Parliament or its own Assembly." He waved his hand, then his look darkened. "No, it's this word about some kind of Navigation Act that troubles me."
"You mean the story that Parliament's thinking of passing an Act restricting trade in all the American settlements to English bottoms?"
"Aye, and let's all pray it's not true. But we hear the damnedLondonmerchants are pushing for it. We've sowed, and now they'd be the ones to reap."
"What do you think you'll do?"
"Do, sir? I'd say there's little wecando. TheLow Countriesdon't want war withEngland. Though that's what it all may lead to ifLondontries stopping free trade." He glanced around the timbered cabin: there was a sternchaser cannon lashed to blocks just inside the large windows aft and a locked rack of muskets and pistols secured forward. Why had Winston invited him aboard tonight? They had despised each other from the first. "The better part of our trade in theNew Worldnow's withVirginiaandBermuda, along withBarbadosand St. Christopher down here in the Caribbees. It'll ruin every captain I know if we're barred from ports in the English settlements."
"Well, the way things look now, you'd probably be wise just to weigh anchor and make for open sea, before there's any trouble here. Assuming your sight drafts are all in order. ''
"Aye, they're signed. But now I'm wondering if I'll ever see them settled." He leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his thinning gray hair. "I've finished scrubbing down theZeelanderand started lading in some cotton. This was going to be my best run yet. God damn Cromwell and his army. As long as the Civil War was going on, nobody inLondontook much notice of theAmericas."
"True enough. You Hollanders got rich, since there was scarcely any English shipping. But in a way it'll be your own fault ifBarbadoshas to knuckle under now toEnglandand English merchants."
"I don't follow you, sir." Ruyters regarded him questioningly.
"It'd be a lot easier for them to stand and fight if they didn't have these new slaves you sold them."
"That's a most peculiar idea, sir." He frowned. "How do you see that?"
Winston rose and strolled aft to the stern windows, studying the leaded glass for a moment before unlatching one frame and swinging it out. A gust of cool air washed across his face. "You Hollanders have sold them several thousand Africans who'd probably just as soon see the island turned back to a forest. So they'll be facing the English navy offshore, with a bunch of African warriors at their backs. I don't see how they can man both fronts."
"That's a curious bit of speculation, sir. Which I'm not sure I'd be ready to grant you. But it scarcely matters now." Ruyters stared down at the table. "So what do you think's likely to happen?"
"My guess is the Assembly'll not surrender the island to Cromwell without a fight. There's too much royalist sentiment there." He looked back at Ruyters. "If there's a blockade, or if Cromwell tries to land English forces, I'd wager they'll call up the militia and shoot back."
"But they've nothing to fight with. Scarcely any ordnance worth the name."
"That's what I'm counting on." Winston's eyes sobered.
"What do you mean, sir?"
"It's the poor man that remembers best who once lent him a shilling. I figure that anybody who helps them now will be remembered here in the days to come, regardless of how this turns out."
"Why in the name of hell would you bother helping them? No man with his wits about him wants to get caught in this, not if he's looking to his own interests."
"I'll look to my interests as I see fit." Winston glanced back. "And you can do the same."
"Aye, to be sure. I intend to. But what would you be doing getting mixed up in this trouble? There'll be powder and shot spent before it's over, sir, or I'm not a Christian."
"I figure there's today. And then there's tomorrow, when this island's going to be a sugar factory. And they'll need shippers. They won't forget who stood by them. If I pitch in a bit now—maybe help them fortify the Point, for instance—I'll have first call. I'm thinking of buying another bottom, just for sugar." He looked at Ruyters and laughed. "Why should all the new sugar profits go to you damned Butterboxes? ''
"Well, sir, you're not under my command anymore. I can't stop you from trying." The Dutchman cleared his throat noisily. "But they'd not forget so soon who's stood by them through all the years. Ask any planter here and he'll tell you we've kept this island, and all the rest of the English settlements, from starving for the last twenty years." He took a swallow from his tankard, then settled it down thoughtfully. "Though mind you, we needed them too.Englandhad the spare people to settle theAmericas, which theLow Countriesnever had, but we've had the bottoms to ship them what they need. It's been a perfect partnership." He looked back at Winston. "What exactly do you think you can do, I mean this business about fortifying the Point?"
"Just a little arrangement I'm making with some members of the Assembly."
"I'm asking you as one gentleman to another, sir. Plain as that."
Winston paused a few moments, then walked back from the window. The lantern light played across his lined face. "As a gentleman, then. Between us I'm thinking I'll off-load some of the ordnance on theDefianceand move it up to the Point. I've got twice the cannon on board that they've got in place there. I figure I might also spare them a few budge-barrels of powder and some round shot if they need it."
"I suppose I see your thinking." Ruyters frowned and drank again. "But it's a fool's errand, for all that. Even if they could manage to put up a fight, how long can they last? They're isolated."
"Who can say? But I hear there's talk in the Assembly about trying to form an alliance of all the American settlements. They figureVirginiaandBermudamight join with them. Everybody would, except maybe the Puritans up in NewEngland, who doubtless can be counted on to side with the hotheads in Parliament."
"And I say the devil take those New Englanders. They've started shipping produce in their own bottoms, shutting us out. I've seen their flags carrying lumber to the Canaries andMadeira; they're even sending fish toPortugalandSpainnow. When a few years past we were all but keeping them alive. Ten years ago they even made Dutch coin legal tender inMassachusetts, since we handled the better part of their trade. But now I say the hell with them." His face turned hopeful. "But if there was an alliance of the other English settlements, I'll wager there'd be a chance they might manage to stand up to Cromwell for a while. Or at least hold out for terms, like you say. They need our shipping as much as we need them."
"I've heard talkBermudamay be in favor of it. Nobody knows aboutVirginia." Winston drank from his tankard. "But for now, the need's right here. At least that's what I'm counting on. If I can help them hold out, they'll remember who stood by them. Anyway, I've got nothing to lose, except maybe a few culverin."