Caribbee Part 17

"I have nothing to learn from you. Soon, perhaps, you may learn from me."

"You've only begun to learn." She felt herself turning on him, bitterly. She could teach him more than he ever dreamed. But why?

"You'll soon find out that you're a _preto_. Perhaps you still don't know what that means. The _branco_ rule this island. They always will.

And they own you."

"You truly are a _branco_. You may speak our tongue, but there is nothing left of your Yoruba blood. It has long since drained away."

"As yours will soon. To water the cane on this island, if you try to rise up against the _branco_. "

"I can refuse to submit." The hardness in his eyes aroused her. Was it desperation? Or pride?

"And you'll die for it."

"Then I will die. If the _branco _kills me today, he cannot kill me again tomorrow. And I will die free." He fixed her with his dark gaze, and the three Yoruba clan marks on his cheek seemed etched in ebony.

Then he turned back toward the hut and the waiting men. "Someday soon, perhaps, I will show you what freedom means."

Chapter Five

Katherine held on to the mizzenmast shrouds, s.h.i.+elding her eyes against the glitter of sun on the bay, and looked at Hugh Winston. He was wearing the identical shabby leather jerkin and canvas breeches she remembered from that first morning, along with the same pair of pistols shoved into his belt. He certainly made no effort to present a dignified appearance. Also, the afternoon light made you notice even more the odd scar across one weathered cheek. What would he be like as a lover? Probably nothing so genteel as Anthony Walrond.

Good G.o.d, she thought, what would Anthony, and poor Jeremy, say if they learned I came down here to the _Defiance_, actually sought out this man they hate so much. They'd probably threaten to break off marriage negotiations, out of spite.

But if something's not done, she told herself, none of that's going to matter anyway. If the rumor from London is true, then Barbados is going to be turned upside down. Hugh Winston can help us, no matter what you choose to think of him.

She reflected on Winston's insulting manner and puzzled why she had actually half looked forward to seeing him again. He certainly had none of Anthony's breeding, yet there was something magnetic about a man so rough and careless. Still, G.o.d knows, finding him a little more interesting than most of the dreary planters on this island scarcely meant much.

Was he, she found herself wondering, at all attracted to her?

Possibly. If he thought on it at all, he'd see their common ground. She finally realized he despised the Puritans and their slaves as much as she did. And, like her, he was alone. It was a bond between them, whether he knew it now or not. . . .

Then all at once she felt the fear again, that tightness under her bodice she had pushed away no more than half an hour past, when her mare had reached the rim of the hill, the last curve of the rutted dirt road leading down to the bay. She'd reined in Coral, still not sure she had the courage to go and see Winston. While her mare pawed and tugged at the traces, she took a deep breath and watched as a gust of wind sent the blood-red blossoms from a grove of cordia trees fleeing across the road. Then she'd noticed the rush of scented air off the sea, the wide vista of Carlisle Bay spreading out below, the sky full of tiny colored birds flitting through the azure afternoon.

Yes, she'd told herself, it's worth fighting for, worth jeopardizing everything for. Even worth going begging to Hugh Winston for. It's my home.

"Do you ever miss England, living out here in the Caribbees?" She tried to hold her voice nonchalant, with a lilt intended to suggest that none of his answers mattered all that much. Though the afternoon heat was sweltering, she had deliberately put on her most feminine riding dress- -a billowing skirt tucked up the side to reveal a ruffle of petticoat and a bodice with sleeves slashed to display the silk smock beneath.

She'd even had the servants iron it specially. Anthony always noticed it, and Winston had too, though he was trying to pretend otherwise.

"I remember England less and less." He sipped from his tankard--he had ordered a flask of sack brought up from the Great Cabin just after she came aboard--and seemed to be studying the sun's reflection in its amber contents. "The Americas are my home now, for better or worse.

England doesn't really exist for me anymore."

She looked at him and decided Jeremy had been right; the truth was he'd probably be hanged if he returned.

He paused a moment, then continued, "And you, Miss Bedford, have you been back?"

"Not since we left, when I was ten. We went first to Bermuda, where father served for two years as governor and chief officer for the Sommers Island Company. Then we came down here. I don't really even think of England much anymore. I feel I'm a part of the Americas now too." She shaded her face against the sun with one hand and noticed a bead of sweat trickling down her back, along the laces of her bodice.

"In truth, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever see England again."

"I'd just as soon never see it again." He rose and strolled across the deck, toward the steering house. Then he settled his tankard on the binnacle and began to loosen the line securing the whipstaff, a long lever used for controlling the rudder. "Do you really want to stay aboard while I take her out?"

"You've done it every day this week, just around sunset. I've watched you from the hill, and wondered why." She casually adjusted her bodice, to better emphasize the plump fullness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, then suddenly felt a surge of dismay with herself, that she would consider resorting to tawdry female tricks. But desperate times brought out desperate measures. "Besides, you've got the only frigate in the bay now that's not Dutch, and I thought I'd like to see the island from offsh.o.r.e. I sometimes forget how beautiful it is."

"Then you'd best take a good, long look, Miss Bedford," he replied matter-of-factly. "It's never going to be the same again, not after sugar takes over."

"Katherine. You can call me Katherine." She tried to mask the tenseness--no, the humiliation--in her voice. "I'm sufficiently compromised just being down here; there's scarcely any point in ceremony."

"Then Katherine it is, Miss Bedford." Again scarcely a glimmer of notice as he busied himself coiling the line. But she saw John Mewes raise his heavy eyebrows as he mounted the quarterdeck companionway, his wide belly rolling with each labored step. Winston seemed to ignore the quartermaster as he continued, "Since you've been watching, then I suppose you know what to expect. We're going to tack her out of the harbor, over to the edge of those reefs just off Lookout Point. Then we'll come about and take her up the west side of the island, north all the way up to Speightstown. It's apt to be at least an hour. Don't say you weren't warned."

Perfect, she thought. Just the time I'll need.

"You seem to know these waters well." It was rhetorical, just to keep him talking. Hugh Winston had sailed up the coast every evening for a week, regardless of the wind or state of the sea. He obviously understood the sh.o.r.eline of Barbados better than anyone on the island.

That was one of the reasons she was here. "You sail out every day."

"Part of my final preparations, Miss Bedford . . . Katherine." He turned to the quartermaster. "John."

"Aye." Mewes had been loitering by the steeringhouse, trying to stay in the shade as he eyed the opened flask of sack. Winston had not offered him a tankard.

"Weigh anchor. I want to close-haul that new main course one more time, then try a starboard tack."

"Aye, as you will." He strode gruffly to the quarterdeck railing and bellowed orders forward to the bow. The quiet was broken by a slow rattle as several s.h.i.+rtless seamen began to haul in the cable with the winch. They chattered in a medley of languages--French, Portuguese, English, Dutch.

She watched as the anchor broke through the waves and was hoisted onto the deck. Next Mewes yelled orders aloft. Moments later the mainsail dropped and began to blossom in the breeze. The _Defiance _heeled slowly into the wind, then began to edge past the line of Dutch merchantmen anch.o.r.ed along the near sh.o.r.eline.

Winston studied the sail for a few moments. "What do you think, John?

She looks to be holding her luff well enough."

"I never liked it, Cap'n. I've made that plain from the first. So I'm thinkin' the same as always. You've taken a fore-and-aft rigged brigantine, one of the handiest under Christian sail, and turned her into a square-rigger. We'll not have the handling we've got with the running rigging."

Mewes spat toward the railing and shoved past Katherine, still astonished that Winston had allowed her to come aboard, governor's daughter or no. It's ill luck, he told himself. A fair looker, that I'll grant you, but if it's doxies we'd be taking aboard now, I can think of plenty who'd be fitter company. He glanced at the white mare tethered by the sh.o.r.e, wis.h.i.+ng she were back astride it and gone. Half the time you see her, the wench is riding like a man, not sidesaddle like a woman was meant to.

"If we're going to make Jamaica harbor without raising the Spaniards'

militia, we'll have to keep short sail." Winston calmly dismissed his objections. "That means standing rigging only. No tops'ls or royals."

"Aye, and she'll handle like a gaff-sailed lugger."

"Just for the approach. While we land the men. We'll keep her rigged like always for the voyage over." He maneuvered the whipstaff to start bringing the stern about, sending a groan through the hull. "She seems to work well enough so far. We need to know exactly how many points off the wind we can take her. I'd guess about five, maybe six, but we've got to find out now."

He turned back to Katherine and caught her eyes. They held something-- what was it? Almost an invitation? But that's not why she's here, he told himself. This woman's got a purpose in mind, all right. Except it's not you. Whatever it is, though, the looks of her'd almost make you wonder if she's quite so set on marrying some stiff royalist as she thinks she is?

Don't be a fool. The last thing you need to be thinking about now is a woman. Given the news, there's apt to be big trouble ahead here, and soon. You've got to be gone.

"So perhaps you'd care to tell me . . . Katherine, to what I owe the pleasure of this afternoon's visit. I'd venture you've probably seen the western coast of this island a few hundred times before, entirely without my aid."

"I was wondering if you'd heard what's happened in London?" She held on to the shrouds, the spider-web of ropes that secured the mast, and braced herself against the roll of the s.h.i.+p as the _Defiance_ eased broadside to the sun. Along the curving sh.o.r.eline a string of Dutch merchantmen were riding at anchor, all three-masted fluyts, their fore and main masts steeped far apart to allow room for a capacious hatch.

In the five weeks that had pa.s.sed since the _Zeelander _put in with the first cargo of Africans, four more slavers had arrived. They were anch.o.r.ed across the bay now, their round sterns glistening against the water as the afternoon light caught the gilding on their high, narrow after-structure. Riding in the midst of them was the _Rotterdam_, just put in from London. The sight of that small Dutch merchantman had brought back her fear. It also renewed her resolve.