HF - 01 - Caribee (41 page)

And then, had they not been savages, would success have been the least possible?

'They are coming,' he said. 'Down there will lie our salvation.' He p
ointed, and heard Susan's breath
as she caught it.

'Down there?' O'Reilly peered at the crevasse. 'We'll be naught but bits of meat hung out for the dogs.'

'You'll be surprised,' Edward said.

'Bad place,' Yarico said. 'Spirits of dead down there.
’

‘I
've no doubt they will be,' Edward agreed.
‘In
an hour or two. Down you go, Susan. You'll have to show these bold lads there's nothing to be afraid of. You too, Margaret, and take these children with you. Over the inner lip, Susan, and into the burning cave. You'll keep the children quiet, and no ma
tt
er what happens, you'll not come out until all sounds of ba
tt
le have ceased. You understand me?'

She hesitated, and then nodded. 'And the Frenchie?'

'Stays here,' Edward said.
‘I
've a task for her.'

Aline's hair flew as she turned her head, sharply.

'All right,' Susan said.' 'Tis a fact I'll be small value in a set to. Come on, Meg. And ye lot. God speed, Edward. And to your boys, Paddy O'Reilly.'

O'Reilly cocked his head. 'Them's the dogs.'

'So we'd best hurry,' Edward said. 'You
’
ll take your lads down, Paddy. You'll find more space than you suppose, so you'll split up, ten to each side. It'll be dark as the pit, but after a few moments you'll get used to it, because of the light coming over the back.'

'And what will ye be doing, Ted, lad?
’

'My job is to get the Dons into the cave. As many of them as possible. But you'll not move, Paddy, and not one of your people will move, until Philip here gives the signal. The Dons are as superstitious as anyone. They'll be worrying about the dark and the glow from the inner cave, long enough. When the signal is given, you'll fall on them. But you'll mind out for mademoiselle here. She's going to be more use than any one of us, and you remember that
. But there's another thing. Thi
s is just the first shot in our war. There mustn'
t
be any survivors.'

Now, where had he heard someone say that before?

The baying of the dogs was close. Paddy O'Reilly looked at Brian Connor. 'Ah, well,' he said. ' Tis certain we'll the more quickly if we stay up here, Brian boy.' He sat down and disappeared. The rest of his companions followed.

'Now, Philip,' Edward said. 'You'll take command. When you hear my call, you'll give the word down there. Arrange your men along the outer walls, and tell them not even to breathe, until they get the signal. And be sure that Susan and Margaret Plummer and the children stay in the inner cavern.'

'Man, 'tis sure a wondrous place.' O'Reilly's voice ghosted up to them.

'But what is that light, to be sure?' Connor's voice shook.

'A natural phenomenon,' Edward reassured him. 'Now be quiet.' He held Aline's arm. 'Would you assist us, mademoiselle?'

'But of course. It is all of our lives, is it not?' She freed her arm.

Then listen well. I wish you to remain here, to allow the Spaniards to catch a sight of you. They will certainly like what they see. Then you must run away from them, and jump clown into the crevass
e. Once in there you must run th
rough the cave and join Susan and Meg.'

'And the Spaniards?"

'Most of them will wish to follow you inside, or my estimate of human nature is sadly at fault. You'll understand there is a risk here. Should you slip, or fall... .'

She tossed her head.
‘I
am not so easily overcome, monsieur, when I am prepared. You took me by surprise.'

'Aye. Well, it is less the men that worry me
than
the dogs. Now prepare yourself.'

He showed Yarico and the other three Carib girls that he wanted them to climb the trees close to the entrance, with their bows and a supply of arrows. 'And you'll shoot straight, Yarico,' he said.

'Yarico always shoot straight,' she remarked.

‘I
've no doubt about that. Who do the Caribs pray to, just before ba
tt
le?'

She pointed to the sky. 'The Caribs pray to Sun, Edward. Sun is cacique of all things, unless sleeping.'

'Well, he's wide awake now. Ask him to keep an eye on things, will you?"

He climbed the tree he had selected for his own, carrying one of the heavy muskets and all the powder and ball; he was himself not sufficiently accurate with a bow. It was nearly noon, and the heat came boiling down through the dun tree curtain. And now he could hear the dogs quite loudly, and even the cries of the men; they could tell their animals were onto a human scent. He flicked sweat from his forehead, dried his hands again, and watched Aline. She knelt by the crevasse, as he had instructed her, appa
rently busying herself with gath
ering some bark. But she too was listening; he could see the colour in her cheeks, and he could watch the rise and fall of her breasts. She was a young woman of rare courage. And rare beauty. And even rarer spirit; it was possible to suppose, watching her expression, that she was enjoying herself.

A dog yelped, close at hand, and Aline stood up. There was a shout in Spanish, followed by a chorus of excitement. Aline glanced through the trees, and then ran for the cleft, si
tt
ing down and sliding out of sight.

Through the bushes came the dogs, held on leashes by two of the soldiers. The rest followed in a close group, discipline forgo
tt
en as they hurried for the picture and the promise which had been presented to them. But discipline, as Edward had hoped, was slender at this moment in any event. The crimson jackets were made darker by sweat; more than one morion had been removed and was carried under the arm, leaving the man at once vulnerable to a blow on the head and incapable of quickly drawing his sword.

The dogs came up to the crevasse, and shied away from the u
tt
er darkness within. The men gath
ered in a cluster before the aperture. But now the dogs were casting on either side of the entrance, beginning to show an interest in the trees, clearly scenting the Carib girls and perhaps Edward. Once again he flicked sweat from his forehead, and levelled his already primed weapon.

The officer in command of the search party came to a decision, and signalled half his men. The girl had gone into the cave, and he was not going to let her escape. The officer sat down and slid into the darkness; he had not even bothered to draw his sword. His men followed, one by one, a dozen of them, leaving eight standing around the entrance. The odds were not as good as Edward had hoped, but they obviously were the
best he was going to get. He thr
ew back his head and shouted, 'Now.'

Pandemonium broke loose. From inside the cavern there came shouts and howls, as the Irishmen, their eyes by now accustomed to the gloom, laid about them on the temporarily blinded Spaniards. The men at the lip insensibly gathered closer together. They could hardly be missed, although as they all wore cuirasses it was still necessary to be accurate. Edward fired. His ball
caught one of the men in the th
igh, and he gave a scream and fell to his knees. Yarico and her companions were far more deadly; one of the Dons took a barb through the neck, and hit the ground with scarce a sound. Two others were wounded about the face, and the remainder gazed in horror at the forest as four more arrow
s struck home. There was one su
rvivor, and he dived for the entrance to the cave, again as Edward had hoped. Three of his comrades were dead, and the other four lay on the ground, vainly tugging at the barbs lodged in their flesh.

'The dogs,' Edward yelled, for the mastiffs were at the foot of the trees. A moment later they were stretched on the earth, and Yarico came sliding down with the u
tt
er ease common to the
Indian
s' prehensile fingers and toes. Edward followed more slowly, then ran to the entrance of the cave. The wounded Spaniards stared at him with wide eyes, and one said something, clearly a plea for mercy. But he had no means of coping with prisoners of war, even had he been able to forget the people on Nevis. 'You'll see to these men,' he told Yarico, and slid into the entrance.

The ba
tt
le in the darkness was also over. Now the Irishmen moved around their victims, completing their dreadful work where it was necessary, loosing morion and breastplate, sword belt and pistol holster.

'Mon Dieu,' Aline said from the inner lip. 'But I was afraid, Edward, I confess it now.'

'And
they
're dead.' Susan sat beside her. 'Every last one of them? Ye have a way with ye after all, Edward. I never doubted that'

'By God,' O'Reilly shouted. 'He's the kind of general we've needed. With this armour, and these weapons, why, we'll show them Dons a thing or two. Aye, Ted, lad? Nay, I'll not call ye that again, I swear it. General Warner. Aye, General Warner, ye'll tell us this is but the beginning.'

Edward gazed up through the aperture at the forest outside, and the brown stained grass, where Yarico and her girls were stripping one of the living Spaniards to slice the raw flesh from his bu
tt
ocks.

'Aye, Paddy,' he said. 'Thi
s is but the beginning.'

10

The Crisis

Edward knelt on the sand, to draw with the end of the stick he held in his hands.
‘
We can start to take the offensive, now,' he said.
‘I
'd judge they're more scared of us than we of them.'

He gazed at the men standing around him. They wore armour, cuirasses and morions, over crimson Spanish doublets and new Spanish breeches; they carried pistols and arquebuses, and every man wore a sword. Yet they were the same Irish devils who had once mocked him. Lacking two of their numbers, alas. But Yeats and his friend had died well, fighting a rearguard action on the day they had been caught too far from the cave.

And the women. Susan, who seemed to grow larger every day; she still wore no more than her shift, which drew tight against her belly. Aline and Meg had actually found themselves breeches to fit their thighs and shirts to cover their breasts and shoulders; if the result was the display of more white leg than any man present had ever seen before at one time,
they
were actually far more decentl
y clad than when reduced to their ta
tt
ered undergarments. Yet they had not really changed, either. Meg Plummer still fought like an avenging angel, and Aline . . . Aline played her part as required, but she had withdrawn her mind. The brutality, the bestiality, the u
tt
er absence of civilization with which she was surrounded, had at last proved too much for her. She spent much of her time with the children, talking to them and entertaining them. But this was to the good, because the children were always a problem. Li
tt
le
Tom more than most, as his moth
er reached back into the savage recesses of her
mind for survival. But Li
tt
le Tom was Aline's favourite. He was a Warner.

Yarico. She stood imme
di
at
ely behind him, her shadow falling across the plan he would draw. Her three compatriots were beside her. They had lived long enough amongst the white men to know that they no longer belonged there. White men did not live as they did because they had fine clothes and big houses and huge shi
ps and noisy guns. They apparentl
y believed that it was best to five as they did. But survival depended upon these four women, in more ways than one, and they had u
tt
erly reverted to their native state, wearing no more than the aprons of their childhood, carrying their bows at all times, and waiting eagerly for the next occasion to pounce upon an unwary Spaniard.

That first day, that first victory, Paddy O'Reilly had vomited, and Aline had all but fainted. And Edward had found the officer's pistol and shot the Spaniard through the head before he could suffer further. And only then stopped to think. What a terrible word for the commander of a desperate band of human beings fight
ing for their lives. Thought im
plied so many things, involved so many aspects of the business of living he had always rejected as u
tt
erly horrible. Thought composed the entire reason for the hatred between his father
and himself. Thought had convinc
ed him that the Spaniards must also be convinced that there were many, many people, savages no less than white men, lurking in the forests of St Ki
tt
s. This was the name the Irish had given to the island, and it was far more fi
tt
ing than the papist St Christopher or the pompous Merwar's Hope.