HF - 01 - Caribee (50 page)

'And he'd not say a word? Why, by God...
‘

Yarico shook her head. 'He got for grow, Edward, and choose. You got for let him do that.'

Aline came outside, her undressing robe pulled across her shoulders. 'What is the ma
tt
er, Edward?"

'Nothing to be alarmed about, sweet. Yarico has sighted four canoes making for the windward
coast We'll be across to St John's, and li
e in wait for them.'

'We?"

‘I
meant such force as I command. I
’
ll leave
Leaming
in charge here, with three men. You'll stay as well, Yarico.'

Aline grasped his arm.
‘I
had thought
to be done with fighting and ki
lling.'

'Life is hardly more than that, dearest Even between lovers.'

There was no humour in her eyes. 'Yet you will take care, and come back to me, Edward. I have built my life on that rock which is your determination, and should that crumble, for any reason, be sure that I would sink with it'

He kissed her on the nose. 'Then you be sure I will come back, Aline. Now I must hurry.' He seized the conch shell which waited by the door and gave a long wailing blast which counted as an alarm signal
. Wapisiane. But thanks to Yari
co's timely warning he could at last se
tt
le that account

‘
We have to hit them, and hit them hard,' he told his men. These people understand nothing but force, and should we let them suspect for a single instant that we are not capable of destroying them, they'll be back time and again. So shoot straight And if we go in with steel, be sure that every blow counts.'

The men nodded. There were thirty-two of them, stout lads, the more so when defending their own homes and families. Thus the eight from St John's itself were his vanguard. The se
tt
lement had be
en abandoned, and yet left exactl
y as it had been to encourage the supposition that it merely slept. The women and children had been sent into the forest, and now the men crouched in the bushes, a hundred yards upwind of the li
tt
le harbour, in which the small lugger, their pride and joy which they had launched only a few weeks before, lay at anchor. But to move the ship might be to alert the
Indian
s that their arrival was expected.

And now Robert Anderson came hurrying through the trees, hot and sweating with his run from the lookout bluff. 'An hour,' he gasped. 'Four canoes, Mr Warner, as you said. Maybe a dozen men to a canoe.

"Long odds,' Peter Doughty mu
tt
ered.

‘I’
ve taken longer,' Edward reminded him. 'And these are not even long, when you come down to it. We wear cuirasses and helmets, to which they will oppose
nothing
but soft flesh. And be sure our dogs will play their parts.'

For the half-dozen mastiffs were already panting at the leash.

'Now,' Edward decided. 'Well each have a glass of wine and a biscuit, to fortify us for whatever lies ahead. And Peter, you'll grant the dogs water, and some of that raw meat; we'll not have them starving, or they'll be too hard to hold.'

'And prayer, Mr
Warner
,' someone said 'Should we not pray?
’

‘
We should,' Edward agreed. 'Did I know a prayer which would suit us all.' Did I know any prayer at all, he reflected, would be the more honest.
‘It
would be best did we each ask God for guidance and strength in our own hearts.'

The sun came higher, and from an immense swathe across the water the light spread and the heat grew. Birds sang
in
the trees and the surf rumbled on the beach below them. Dawn
. Always dawn. Men should not di
e at dawn, he thought. Dusk was more fi
tt
ing. Just as they should always die on the ebbing tide. But here too, the tide, such as it was in these latitudes, was making, the beach slowly being covered.

A dark shape came round the headland, followed by another, and then another. A whisper of excitement drifted through the
watchers, and Edward rose to hi
s knees, 'Easy,' he said 'You'll make no noise, and fire no shot, until I say so.
’

The canoes approached the shore, paddling more slowly now. Each man on board would be kneeling, using both hands for his oar, his bow and his arrows and his spear lying in the bo
tt
om of the boat beside him. But now they were within hardly more than thirty feet of the shore, rising and falling in the beginning of the surf, in the very last water where they could float, and yet they made no effort to drive their craft up the beach.

Edward frowned. Could there possibly be something about the village to betray the English alarm? But it lay quiet, bathed in the soft golden light of the dawn, u
tt
erly peaceful. Too peaceful? Perhaps they were alarmed at the absence of dogs. Perhaps he should have left one or two roaming the beach. The
Indian
s were well aware that wherever the white man went, there too went his faithful companion.

They don'
t
mean to land,' Anderson said in amazement.

‘
Well, then, well discourage them just the same. Come on lads.' Edward rose to his feet, parted the bushes and ran down the sand. The
Indian
s certainly saw him. One pointed, and they began a loud jabber.

'Set your pieces,' Edward shouted, and the men hastily placed their staves and lit their matches. The canoes were backing off now, but several arrows were discharged, to fall harmlessly into the surf.

'All right,' Edward commanded, sword raised high. 'Give fire.'

The cloud of black smoke accompanied the rumble of the exploding powder into the morning air, and the sea around the canoes became peppered with the falling ball; it did not appear as if anyone had been hit. In any event, the ba
tt
le, if it could be so called, was over. While the dogs ran up and down the shallows barking, and the men hastily refilled their pans, the canoes turned and rowed for the open sea, with twice as much speed and energy as they had shown when approaching the shore.

'Now there is the most remarkable thing I ever saw,' Anderson said. "You'd almost suppose they came to see rather than to carry out a raid.'

‘
What say you, Mr Warner?' Doughty asked. 'You've a sight more experience of these people than any of us.'

Edward stared at the canoes, already commencing to vanish around the headland. He was aware of no exhi
laration, not even of that overw
helming feeling of relief which comes to a man who has prepared himself to kill, and perhaps even be killed, and discovers that such an end will not now be necessary. On the contrary, his belly had suddenly become filled with lead. Why, and from whence he did not know. The canoes had been sighted, four of them, and four of them had appeared. They had all been fully manned. But there was the point. They had been manned by the fiercest human beings on earth.

But hi
s name was Warner, and
they
had run from that name before. Except that, having run once, from a name, why come back? He was being less
than
reasonable. They had wished to try him out, his speed and decision and determination. And no doubt someone had recognized him when he had gone running down the beach. I
t was as simple as that. Someth
ing to be proud of.

Except that he had only gone ru
nning down the beach when it had been apparent that
they
were not goin
g to land.

'Anderson,' he said. 'They are leaving, and that is certain. You can get your people back into
their
homes.'

'And we'll cook you the best breakfast you ever tasted, Mr Warner.'

'No,' Edward said.
‘I
must take my men back to English Harbour.'

Anderson frowned at him. 'Back to....' he glanced at the last of the canoes. 'Because of them? They cannot make the harbour before you, Mr Warner, not even if you dally here half the day.'

' 'Tis not those canoes I am afraid of, Bob. Collect your weapons, lads. We had best hurry.'

His urgency, no less than a sudden almost telepathic communication of fear, gave them haste. Within minutes they were on their way back down the rough path which joined the two se
tt
lements, and three hours later they were at the south of the island. In all that time
they
had exchanged not a word, but neither had they slackened a step, two dozen men driven by an unspeakable fear. So, having gained the landlocked beach, they did not speak now, either. They stopped, and panted, and stared, at the huts with their swinging doors.

Untended doors. No fire, because the Caribs had not wished to alert them too soon. No fire. But sufficient evidence of what had happened, even without the sha
tt
ered wreckage of the sloop sticking up out of the shallow water.

Ganner was first to speak. Or rather to cry, as he stumbled down the shore and knelt beside
his wife. Her clothes were gath
ered in a bundle on he
r chest, and above them her thro
at was cut. Her face revealed every single thing that had happened to her in the seconds before she died.

The other women were also sca
tt
ered on the sand, with their children. The men were dead in a group, on the porch of the Governor's house. They had been killed by arrows, and in this were lucky. Lucky in that the
Indian
s had come with a purpose, which they had intended to fulfill in haste. But there wer
e only three dead men; Hal Leam
ing was missing.

A purpose. Heart swelling, very veins seeming about to burst their contents to flood his system, Edward stepped past the dead men and into the house. But the house was empty.

'Mr Warner. Mr Warner, sir.'

How hot the sun. How God damned hot. How many times would he stand upon a destroyed village site, and look at the bodies of human beings who had sought to do nothing more than grow tobacco? Was any crop, any possession, any freedom, worth this much brutal filth?

He followed the man, through the other stricken men, his own grief lurking, waiting to be released. On the beach by the water's edge there were strong wooden posts driven into the sand for the mooring of dinghies. On the sand between two of the posts lay Joachim Warner, his head a bloody pulp where it had been smashed against one of the posts.

The devils,' Doughty said. 'Oh, they are devils from hell itself.'

Doughty could u
tt
er thoughts like that. Doughty was not married, and Doughty had not been present at Blood River. 'Ed-ward?'

He turned, the tears, released by the unexpected voice, rolling down his cheeks. Li
tt
le Tom staggered down the beach towards him, top heavy and lurching, because in his arms he carried Joan
Warner
.

Tom.' Edward bounded forward, seized his half-brother and his daughter together. 'By Christ, boy. Where is your mother? And Aline?
’

‘I
n
di
an
s come,' Tom said. 'Three, four hours after you leave, Ed-ward. They come sudden, across the land. Our people fight, but no
good. Mama run outside, and Alin
e pick up Joachim, she try for pick up Joan too, but
then
Indian
come in hou
se. He see only Aline and Joach
im, so I lie on floor, on top of Joan, with rug over back, and he go again.'

'You saved her life.' Edward knelt before the boy. 'You'll never want, boy. This I swear, so long as I have my life. But you must tell me what happened with your mother and Aline.'

‘I
n
di
an
take them, Ed-ward. Them and Joachim.'

Edward got up. 'No,' he said. 'They did not want Joachim. They wanted only Yarico and Aline.' They had taken
Leaming
as well, but out of all this, they had wanted only Yarico and Aline.

Wapisiane.

12

The Empire

The grating of the bo
tt
om of the canoe on the sand seemed to seep upwards, throug
h the wooden bark and through Al
ine's flesh into her belly. It was the first physical feeling of which she had been aware for several hours. How many hours? Even that was not a question she could answer. Memory came to a full stop with the swinging body of Joachim. He had been half asleep, and u
tt
ered not a sound. For that, she supposed, she should be grateful.

She had screamed, and tried to run forward, and been held by fingers she would never forget. She could feel them y
et, even if now they clutched th
eir oars instead of her. They had gripped her, and bi
tt
en into her flesh, while she had been held close against
their
leader. And his eyes had eaten further into her body than even the fingers. She had been unable to think, had not wanted to think, had not wanted to listen, to the screams and the shrieks from all around her, had not wanted to inhale, because that would mean inhaling
Indian
, and inhaling blood, and inh
aling fear, and inhaling lust. She had wanted only to bridge the few seconds, for surely it could only be a few seconds, between her present misery and her death.