Thomas Hoover - Caribbee

"Christ on a cross, you've totally taken leave of sense!" She looked at him dumbfounded. "You'd best stop dreaming about Jamaica and put your deep mind to work on how you're going to collect those sight bills from the Council. You've got to make a living, love."

"The sight bills are part of my plan. As it happens, I expect to settle that very item next Friday night."

"Best of luck." She paused, then pushed back from the table. "God's blood, were you invited?"

He looked up from his tankard. "How do you know where I'm going?"

"There's only one place it could be. The fancy ball Master Briggs is holdin' for the Council. In his grand new estate house. It's the reason there's not a scrap of taffeta left in the whole of Bridgetown. I was trying to buy some all yesterday for the girls."

"I have to go. It's the perfect time to see them all together."

"And I suppose Miss Katherine Bedford'll be there as well?" Her voice had acquired an unmistakable edge. "In her official capacity as 'First Lady'?"

"Oddly enough, I neglected to enquire on that point."

"Did you now?" She sniffed. "Aye, her highness'll be in attendance, and probably wearin' half the taffeta I wanted to buy. Not that it'll be made up properly. She'll be there, the strumpet, on my honor…"

"What if she is? It's no matter to me." He drank again. "I just want my sight bills paid, in coin as agreed, not in bales of their damned worthless tobacco."

She seemed not to hear. "… when she's too busy ridin' that mare of hers to so much as nod her bonnet to an honest woman who might have need to make a living…"

"All right." He set down his tankard. "I'll take you."

"Pardon?"

"I said I'll take you."

"Now you've gone totally daft." She stared at him, secretly overjoyed he'd consider asking. "Can you fancy the scene? Me, in amongst all those dowdy Puritan sluts! Stuffing their fat faces whilst arguing over whether to starve their indentures completely to death. Not to mention there'd be general heart seizure in the ranks of the Council, the half of which keep open accounts here on the sly. Only I'm lucky to get paid in musty tobacco, let alone the coin you 're dreaming of." She laughed. "And I warrant you'll be paid with the same, love. That's assuming you're ever paid at all."

"As you will." He took a sip of sack. "But since you're so worried about the women, don't forget who else'll probably be there."

"Who do you mean?"

"Remember what the Portugals say: 'E a mulata que e Mulher’.”

" 'It's the mulatto who's the real woman.' " She translated the famous Pernambuco expression, then frowned. "I suppose you mean that Portuguese mulatto Master Briggs bought for himself when you took them all down to Brazil. The one named Serina."

"The very one. I caught a glimpse of her again last night."

"I know her, you rogue. Probably better than you do. Briggs is always sending her down here for bottles of kill-devil, sayin' he doesn't trust his indentures to get them home. She's a fine-featured woman of the kind, if I say it myself."

"Finer than Briggs deserves."

"Did you know that amongst the Council she's known as his 'pumpkin-colored whore'? Those hypocritical Puritan whoremasters. I always ask her to stay a bit when she comes. I think she's probably lonely, poor creature. But I can tell you one thing for certain-she takes no great satisfaction in her new owner. Or in Barbados either, come to that, after the fine plantation she lived on in Brazil." She laughed. "Something not hard to understand. I'm always amazed to remember she's a slave. Probably one of the very first on this island." She looked away reflectively. "Though now she's got much company."

"Too much."

"You may be right for once. It's a new day, on my faith, and I don't mind telling you it troubles me a bit. There're apt to be thousands of these Africans here soon. There'll be nothing like it anywhere in the Americas." She sighed. "But the Council's all saying the slaves'll change everything, make them all rich." Her voice quickened as she turned back. "Do you suppose it's true?"

"Probably. That's why I plan to try and change a few things too." He looked out at the bay, where a line of brown pelicans glided single file across the tips of waves. The horizon beyond was lost in mist. "My own way."

Katherine gazed past the pewter candlesticks and their flickering tapers, down the long cedar table of Briggs' dining hall, now piled high with stacks of greasy wooden plates spilling over with half-finished food. The room was wide and deep, with dark oak beams across the ceiling and fresh white plaster walls. Around the table were rows of grim men in black hats and plump Puritan women in tight bodices and starched collars. For all its surface festivity, there was something almost ominous about the evening. Change was in the air, and not change for the better.

At the head of the table were the most prominent members of the Council, the owners of Barbados' largest plantations. She knew the wealthiest ones personally: Edward Bayes, his jowls protruding beneath his whisp of beard, owned the choicest coastal lands north around Speightstown; Thomas Lancaster, now red-cheeked and glassy-eyed from the liquor, had the largest plantation in the rolling plains of St. George's parish, mid-island; Nicholas Whittington, dewlapped and portly, was master of a vast acreage in Christ's Church parish, on the southern coast.

Anthony Walrond had not been invited, nor any other of the new royalist emigres-which she should have known was exactly what was going to happen before she went to all the bother of having a new dress and bodice made up. No, tonight the guests were the rich planters, the old settlers who arrived on Barbados in the early years and claimed the best land. They were the ones that Dalby Bedford, now seated beside her, diplomatically sipping from his tankard, liked to call the "plantocracy." They had gathered to celebrate the beginnings of the sugar miracle. And the new order.

The room was alive with an air of expectancy, almost as palpable as the smoke that drifted in through the open kitchen door. Benjamin Briggs' banquet and ball, purportedly a celebration, was in truth something more like a declaration: the Assembly, that elected body created by Dalby Bedford from among the small freeholders, would soon count for nothing in the face of the big planters' new wealth and power. Henceforth, this flagship of the Americas would be controlled by the men who owned the most land and the most slaves.

The worst part of all, she told herself, was that Briggs' celebration would probably last till dawn. Though the banquet was over now, the ball was about to commence. And after that, Briggs had dramatically announced, there would be a special preview of his new sugarworks, the first on the island.

In hopes of reinforcing her spirits, she took another sip of Canary wine, then lifted her glass higher, to study the room through its wavy refractions. Now Briggs seemed a distorted, comical pygmy as he ordered the servants to pass more bottles of kill-devil down the table, where the planters and their wives continued to slosh it into their pewter tankards of lemon punch. After tonight, she found herself thinking, the whole history of the Americas might well have to be rewritten. Barbados would soon be England's richest colony, and unless the Assembly held firm, these few greedy Puritans would seize control. All thanks to sugar.

Right there in the middle of it all was Hugh Winston, looking a little melancholy and pensive. He scarcely seemed to notice as several toasts to his health went round the table-salutes to the man who'd made sugar possible. He obviously didn't care a damn about sugar. He was too worried about getting his money.

As well he should be, she smiled to herself. He'll never see it. Not a farthing. Anybody could tell that Briggs and the Council hadn't the slightest intention of settling his sight bills. He didn't impress them for a minute with those pretty Spanish pistols in his belt. They'd stood up to a lot better men than him. Besides, there probably weren't two thousand pounds in silver on the whole island.