HF - 03 - The Devil's Own (32 page)

So, what do you think, Kit Hilton, he wondered, as he watched the smoke columns rise into the sky. Of the slaves, miserable fools, who would attempt to run away? Some of them. But then, he could pass on from those unhappy souls to the laughter of the couples in the mating compound, to the inexhaustible fascination of watching the sinuous black bodies coupling and sliding, one against the other. So reality returned in the walks through the sick house, in the occasional ghastly journey across the water. Never had he landed there; it was enough to back oars in the shallows and thrust the unfortunate black over the side. Always were the lepers gathered to wait for the new arrival. Strange people. He suspected that his own resort, on learning that he must literally rot before his own eyes, would be a spasm of madness followed by suicide. Yet these offered no sound, no signs of resentment and no attempts at violence. So perhaps the brain rotted first.

And always there was the escape, back up the hill, horse flogged at a furious gallop, for he rode as well as Marguerite now, to return to her arms, to the ice-cold glasses of sangaree, to the sound of her fingers running softly over the keys of her spinet, the lilt of her voice, for she sang quite beautifully, to the laughter of the children.

And where was the young man who had stormed up to Goodwood to challenge a governor, or who had boasted his ideals to Agrippa and Lilian Christianssen? Why, he had grown older, and there was all that need be said. He played cards with the Deputy Governor now, and they did no more than smile at each other's shortcomings, while again Marguerite played and Celestine Warner smiled at them all, and looked happier than for years. He rode into town with head held high, and should a face peer out at him from the warehouse, then he would raise his hat, were it a woman, and smile courteously enough should it be a man.

What would he do should the man come out of the doorway of the warehouse and greet him? Why, he would rein his horse and pass the time of day, pleasantly enough, congratulate him on his marriage—to which the Hiltons had been invited but which Marguerite had decided they should not attend—and ask after his family. A friend was a f
riend, no matter the colour
of his skin. He had simply realized that the world went on its way, regardless of man's efforts, and that a man must do the best he can while the universe, and the affairs of the universe, went spinning around him. Slavery was a fact of life, and slavery operated on fear. All in all, as he had early discovered, there was less fear on Green Grove than on any other plantation in the island. In the Leewards. And going on Agrippa's own experience, in the entire Caribee Isles. A man who would attempt to tilt against the world, to stop it in its headlong career, or even to alter the course of that career, was a fool, or at the best an immature boy.

So then, was Agrippa a fool? And Lilian Christianssen? For there was the reason they seldom were at the windows to wave at him, and would never dream of speaking with him on the street. They counted him one of the plantocracy, and one could not be a planter and a Quaker at the same time. Not in this world.

But were they, in their goodness and the purity of their ambitions, doing any more for the slaves than he was? He could take much of the credit for Green Grove's peace on his own shoulders. His overseers feared him as much as they feared their mistress, and for that reason were they less inclined to give rein to their own desires and their own rages. And the blacks could at least expect fairness; savage fairness should they transgress the laws laid down by their mistress and supported by the right arm of her husband, but none the less, the law applied to all. The transportation of Martha Louise across the water had proved that to them.

And how long ago was that? Nine years? Surely she was dead, by now. But none knew, who lived and who died across the water. And none dare ask.

Oh, indeed, the Hiltons had much to celebrate. But the best of all celebrations were those they enjoyed by themselves, with Anthony marshalling his tin soldiers in the centre of the drawing-room floor, with Henry Morgan always to the fore, but not yet the tallest and best set up of the models; that place was reserved for Captain Hilton, marching at his commander's elbow, while the rest followed behind, eternally and interminably assaulting the hassock which was Panama City. Amongst these others was Jean DuCasse. His was not an unfamiliar name, in the Leewards, as England and France had found a more fruitful war was to be fought between themselves. Now he commanded a buccaneer fleet himself, which only last year had ravaged the north coast of Jamaica. A successful raid, carried out with a fleet of five ships. Perhaps in time he would equal the fame of Morgan himself.

Kit wondered if Jean, careering around the Caribbean at the head of his veteran freebooters, ever spared a thought for the successful Antiguan planter, Kit Hilton, the man who had been with him at Panama?

On the far side of the room Rebecca played with her dolls, a strange collection, some home-made, bits of wool on the ends of sticks which represented arms and legs and bodies, others imported from Holland via the enormous warehouses of St Eustatius. She seldom joined her brother in his games; they fought whenever they intended to do anything together. But they were both happy and healthy children.

He wanted no more. He had his son and heir, to carry on the Hilton name, to inherit this magnificent house and these magnificent fields, and he had his daughter, to take after her mother, he hoped and prayed, and to be married, well—no doubt, an occasion to look forward to in the distant future. But another child, even another pregnancy, would rob him yet again of the comfort of that superb body which had so strangely come into his possession. For on these private celebratory occasions the group was completed by Marguerite and himself. They shared the settee, and watched their children. She wore her undressing-robe and lay back in his arms
, while their glasses of sangare
e stood waiting at their elbows.

Her head rested on his shoulder, and every time he breathed he inhaled her perfume. She would employ no wet nurse, and had brought both her children to their first birthdays without saving herself. Yet did her breasts remain swollen to his touch, and delicious to feel. Nor was there more than the slightest stretch marks on her belly, the slightest thickening of her thighs. And she was past thirty. He had had the very best of her. But surely there was so much more to come.

He squeezed, gently, and she nuzzled him with the back of her head. 'And are you, now, content, dearest?' she asked.

'Should a man ever be content?'

'No. Except on the day of his death, and few reach that climax with contentment in their hearts. But few men have accomplished so much as you, in these short years you have lived.'

'Flatterer.'

'My business is with facts. How else do I operate my plantation without being robbed by my own book-keepers? Shall I itemize your prowess? For let us not suppose that you began your career with even the normal drawbacks to which your name and fortune might have reduced you. In addition, you were left an orphan with no more than the clothes on your back and the brains in your head and the courage in your heart. Yet did you survive and prosper, command a squad of musketeers before Panama, and when that venture turned out badly, yet did you once again pick yourself up from the floor.'

'Not so simply,' he smiled. 'I was dragged from the floor, by our friend Daniel.'

'No friend, Kit,' she said, twisting her body to slide right down the settee beside him, so that her head lay on his lap and she could face him. 'Not that demon, believe me. He may be regarded as an instrument of fate, as an evil instrument, surely, but here accomplishing only good. And so you sought me once again. When I had almost despaired of waiting. And thus you came, and saw, and conquered. But even then were you not content. Now you have raised the efficiency and the accomplishments of my plantation. Now you bestride the narrow world of planting like the colossus you are. You have no more fields to conquer, where sugar-cane is concerned. Nor have you anything left to accomplish as regards my bed. You have made me the happiest woman in the world, and the most content. You have brought from my belly two splendidly healthy children. You thrill me with desire and with love and with admiration whenever I look upon you.'

'But yet you are not satisfied,' he suggested.

She frowned at him. 'What makes you say that?'

'Your tone, sweetheart. The suggestions that you are leaving something unsaid.'

She sat up, violently, her hair flying and her undressing-robe trembling. She seized his hands. 'Yes. Yes, my darling.

Now I would have you take your talents and your courage to a wider field.' 'You are seeking another plantation?'

'Sometimes I wonder if you are deliberately dense, or if you merely seek to mock me. Listen to me, Kit. You are master of the richest plantation in this island. Nay, in the entire Leewards. Yet you have no say in the management of the island which protects you and from which you take your wealth. There is a dangerous imbalance. Listen to me,' she insisted as he would have kissed her.' 'Tis not of you I speak. 'Tis of Green Grove itself. It is twenty years since the master of Green Grove took his seat in the Assembly. Poor Harry had no interest in politics, and besides, twenty years ago things were different. Harry, and my father, and his brother, made their way here despite politics, not because of them. They used to smile, in the old days, at the King's Commissioners, and agree with what they said, and then ignore them. Then when the King's head was cut off, and Ayscue's Commonwealth fleet ranged these waters, there was no choice but to smile once again, and rely on the fact that three thousand miles is a deal of salt water. Then, with the restoration, when the new King also sought to impose his iniquitous taxes on us, to lease us yet again to his court favourites, we were accomplished in the arts of dissembling.'

'I had heard that the new lessor, Willoughby, came himself to manage his new estates.'

Marguerite smiled. 'Pie did, and found us rather more than he had bargained for. He settled in Barbados, and soon took to buccaneering, and disappeared at sea. No doubt he was drowned, although it suits certain parties to pretend that he may yet languish in a Spanish prison. Certain it is that he accomplished nothing for either good or evil in these parts. But then, then, Kit, politics began to hit home. The four and a half per cent tax, why, 'tis nothing while we prosper. Yet it is an iniquitous example of blatant despotism. The quarrel between King James and his people. That were bad enough. But now this infernal Dutchman has got us involved in a seemingly endless war with the French ...'

'When I first came here, your uncle told me that our only friends in these islands wer
e the Dutch.'

'Oh, indeed, th
e Dutch of Eustatius. Believe me, Kit, they abhor our forcible involvement in European politics no less than we. Our business is to make what profit we may. God knows in accomplishing that we receive no assistance from Europe. But they are quick enough to get their fingers into our money. And if their squabbling should mean that our plantations are burned and our profit lost, be sure that they will still want their taxes.' She paused for breath, her face flushed.

Now at last he could manage his kiss. 'It seems to me that it is
you
they require in the House.'

'Aye,' she said. 'I'd sing them a song. But, being men, they have turned the Assembly into a men's club, to which no woman can be admitted. There you have the saga of Green Grove. Harry would take no part in politics during the last ten years of his life, and I was barred by my sex. While these last ten years you have been concentrating, rightly, my love, believe me when I say that, on the plantation and on me. I would have you neglect neither of us. But it behoves me to spread your protecting, your encouraging, your advancing wings over a larger canvas.'

'The Assembly?' he wondered.

'The scat is yours, by right, Kit. Every owner of a plantation has a seat, by right.'

'I know that, sweetheart. My imagination was but failing at the thought of Kit Hilton, buccaneer and
matelot,
robber and rapist, pretending to Parliament.'

'Oh, what rubbish you do talk,' she cried, and slipped a stage further, to her knees beside the couch, while Anthony and Rebecca abandoned their games to stare at their parents with wide eyes. 'Today you are only Kit Hilton, planter and gentleman. The past is the past. Only the present and the future is of importance. Say you will go, Kit. The House always sits as soon as the ships are loaded with the crop, and we all have more time to ourselves. Say you will go, my darling.'

Kit poured them each a glass of sangaree. 'Why,' he said, 'perhaps it is a secret ambition of mine, to strut a wider stage. Let us drink to the political career of Captain Christopher Hilton.'

*
*

The Negro majordomo, resplendent in dark blue coat over white breeches and white stockings, banged the floor four times with his staff, and the room fell silent. 'Captain Christopher Hilton.'