HF - 03 - The Devil's Own (45 page)

Kit nodded. 'At least they will know the risk they run.' He pressed his tricorne a little more firmly on his head, opened the door and stepped through. The crowd were baying and shouting, and for the moment did not notice him; their attention was taken by the tall figure of Agrippa, who stood with the two horses at the foot of the steps.

'Nigger,' they chanted. 'Pirate. Nigger pirate.'

'He should be hanged,' someone yelled. ' 'Tis the pirates should be suffering justice, not our Governor.'

'Aye, to the gallows with him,' someone else yelled.

Agrippa stared at them, and they made no move to close him. But their temper was rising.

Kit walked down the steps. His own anger simmered only just below the surface. And he had recognized Chester in the throng.

'Edward,' he called. 'Dear chap, you'd best send your friends home, lest someone gets hurt.'

There was a sudden silence, as they turned to look at him. He continued to walk down the steps, and now reached the foot.. Agrippa held his stirrup for him, and he swung himself into the saddle.

'Indian lover,' someone yelled.

'What did you do?' asked someone else. 'Hold your own wife on the floor for the red devils to make at her?'

Kit swung his horse smartly aside, knocking two men from their feet, reached the last speaker,
bent from the saddle to seize th
e man by his coat and whip him from the ground. He held the wriggling body close, while the fellow's feet kicked feebly and the crowd gaped a such a display of strength and determination.

'The next time you address me, sir,' Kit said, 'have a weapon in your hand, or take a whipping." He threw the man away from him; the flying body cannoned into three more men and all fell. The crowd surged back, and then surged forward again, to check and once more retreat as Kit's hands dropped to the pistols at his belt. And Agrippa was also armed.

'Ow, ow me God,' screamed the man he had thrown down. 'My leg is broken.'

'Now there is a pity,' Kit said. 'I had intended it to be your head. Will you gentlemen stand aside, or must I clear a way with my sword?'

'By God, Kit Hilton,' Chester shouted. 'Would you declare war on us all?'

'If need be, Edward. Will you be the first? These people can make a space for us. I have here pistols and a sword. Or would you prefer daggers and bare hands? Name it, man. Name it. Let us be at it.'

Chester stared at him, the colour slowly draining from his face. The crowd stared also, from one to the other of the planters. But others were separating from in front of the two horses. Kit urged his mount forward, and Agrippa clattered immediately behind him. A few moments later they were through the crowd and trotting along the road leading south.

'I thought we would have to fight our way out,' Agrippa remarked.

Kit shook his head. 'They have too high a regard for their own skins. They have to be whipped to it, or shown the way, and the planters lack the belly to draw on me.'

'Yet can they still harm you, Kit.' Agrippa urged his mount level. 'For how may a man exist, without human companionship?'

'And am I that bereft? I have you, old friend. And any others?'

'They support you entirely, Kit. They are distressed you would not immediately call upon them.'

‘I’l
l have no man be forced to declare his support for me, Agrippa, especially one who lives in the centre of that rabble and yet refuses the use of weapons. Nor could I expose Lilian to such contumely.'

'Yet is she already exposed,' Agrippa said.

'How can that be?'

'God alone knows, Kit. But it is common knowledge in St John's that she is your mistress.'

Kit frowned at him. 'Dag has heard this?'

'He has said nothing to me. But if he is not stone deaf, he has heard it.'

'By God,' Kit said. 'But no one in the island knew of it, save you, and me, and Marguerite ... by God.' He kicked his horse in the ribs, set it to a gallop. A man, rushing to disaster, with anger in his heart. For did not his strength truly depend upon Marguerite, and the wealth of Green Grove? And he could expect nothing but anger there, at what he had done. That indeed was why he was hurrying home now, to placate her. And how could he do that, with anger colouring his own emotions?

Yet he would not slacken his pace. He felt like a ship caught in the full force of a hurricane wind, blown hither and thither and unable to do more than keep afloat, by doing the correct things, trimming the sails, manning the pumps, shifting the ballast, from hour to hour, intent only upon survival, but without any knowledge of where in the ocean the storm would eventually leave him floating, or if, indeed, he would be left floating at all, and not stranded upon some rocky shore.

He galloped down the last of the road and into the drive. The Negroes stopped work to stare at him. They were busy clearing the burned-out fields, saving which of the plants could be used as ratoons for a fresh crop. Others laboured on the Great House, plugging bullet holes, removing the shattered doors where the Caribs had broken in, standing by with pots of paint to remove the last traces of the conflict, as were still others working down in the overseers' village. But all stopped to stare at their master, flogging his horse into the compound, throwing the reins to Maurice Peter and stamping up the stairs on to the verandah, while Agrippa also reined in beneath him, but remained mounted.

'Father,' Tony came tumbling through the withdrawing-room, starkly empty as most of the furniture had been removed, to be repaired or consigned to the flames. Only the spinet remained, strangely overlooked by the marauding Indians, or untouched because they did not recognize its meaning.

'Boy.' Kit swept him from the floor, hugged him close.

'Did you win, Father? The news from town is that all the Caribs are dead.'

'Not all.' Kit set him back on the floor, stooped to kiss Rebecca on the cheek. 'Where is Miss Johnson?'

'She has not come out today
, Father. There is so much tumul
t and excitement she feared to ride alone.'

'And your mother?'

'Mama is upstairs, in bed.'

Kit frowned at the boy. 'Marguerite, in bed, at this hour?'

'She has been in bed for two days, Captin,' Maurice Peter said. 'Since the fleet sailed, almost.'

'By God,' Kit said, bounding up the stairs. But how his heart overflowed with relief. Because there was surely the reason she had not come to town.

He pulled the door open. She sat up in bed wearing a shawl over her shoulders, but nothing else so far as he could see. Her hair was loose on the pillows propped behind her head. She looked as well, and as beautiful, as ever he had known her, and there was a jug of iced sangaree on the table beside her.

'Meg. They told me you were ill.'

'A slight fever,' she said. 'Nothing more.'

He crossed the room, and noticed the thin lines running away from her eyes, the bunches of muscle at the corners of her mouth. She had been under some strain, and she was nervous. 'Sweetheart.' He held her arms, and kissed her on the mouth.

'I expected you yesterday,' she said. 'Did not the fleet return, yesterday?'

'Indeed we did. There was much to be done.'

Their eyes seemed to lock. 'Indeed,' she said. 'A victory to be celebrated, as I have heard.'

'We were ever straight with each other in the past, sweet Meg.'

'So be straight with me now, Kit. I have heard so much, and all of it garbled and contradictory. I would not injure your projects by appearing in town. I also would believe nothing of what those foul-mouthed gossips brought to me. I would hear it all, from no other lips than yours.'

He got up, and her fingers left his, reluctantly. He paced the room, paused to pour himself a drink. 'You knew my purpose?'

'I doubted it would succeed.'

'It would have. Unfortunately, your ... father did not respect it. I gave Tom Warner my word, Meg. I gave his people my word. And they were shot and stabbed and carved in cold blood. You have mirrors scattered throughout this house, in which we have enjoyed preening ourselves and thinking, and saying to each other, what a splendid pair we make. Had I not accused your father of the crime he committed I should have had to break them all.'

'Then the rumours are true.' She spoke very quietly.

'Philip Warner has been removed from the position of Deputy Governor, and is under arrest. He leaves St John's tomorrow, for London, and his trial.'

Marguerite gazed at him for some seconds, then she threw back the covers and got out of bed. She left the shawl behind her, went to the door, and threw it wide. 'Ellen Jane,' she called, her voice clear and high as a bell.

'Yes, mistress?'

'You'll prepare my bath. And my town clothes. Quickly, girl.'

'You'll go to town?' Kit asked.

Marguerite draped her undressing-robe around her shoulders. 'Should I let my father go to his trial without saying goodbye?'

'No,' Kit agreed. 'I had not expected that. Shall I ride with
you?'

'No.' She extended her left hand, looked at the ring which glinted there. 'No. I prefer to go alone. But it would be best for you to return there, before I return
here.'

'To be with my mistress, you mean, as you have so carefully put about?'

Her head came up, and her gaze scorched his face. 'You can be with whomsoever you please, Kit. But I do not wish to see you again.'

How quietly she spoke. And how ridiculous her words.
'You,
do not wish to see
me?'

'You have forced me to understand my own stupidity. You watched me lie on the floor beneath a black man, and then sought to forgive the man who caused it. I do not understand the mind of a man who could do that. I endeavoured to understand. I endeavoured to tell myself that perhaps you have a stature, a breadth of vision, that exceeds mine. I placed you above other men, ten years ago, when I elected to marry you. Father endeavoured to dissuade me, and I would not listen to him. But it would seem he was right. Or I overestimated my own powers. I knew you then for what you are, Kit. At least, I knew your strengths and your weaknesses, your past crimes and your possibilities. I did not understand, alas, that streak of deep wayward revolution that runs through your soul. I should have. Not only did my father warn me of it, but it was there in your own past, in the history of your family. Tony Hilton was ever a rebel. Edward Warner was ever a rebel. Susan Hilton was the daughter of an outlaw and the wife of another. Perhaps it is simply that too much of the wild Irish runs in your veins. I knew all of these things, ten years ago. But I thought I could change you.'

Almost she smiled.

'How many women make that mistake? I thought I could take that strength and that vigour and that demoniac energy and harness it, for the use of Green Grove, for the use of the Warners, for the use of Antigua. And you have proved me wrong, time and again. So leave this place, Kit. I took you from the dust. I'll not return you there. Sign what bills you wish, find what happiness you wish, with your Danish whore. I'll not gainsay you. God knows ...' she hesitated. 'I love you. I have never loved any man but you. I shall never love any
man but you. But to have you in my bed now would sicken me no less than the memory of George Frederick.'

The sun dropped into the Caribbean Sea with its invariable suddenness, and darkness swept across Antigua. The two horsemen walked their mounts slowly through the main street of St John's.

They had waited till dusk, deliberately, to avoid the mobs, the risk of giving offence. Out of fear? That at least was not true. Out of a desire to cause no more harm, to bring about no more of a catastrophe than had already happened.

What was it Jean had said, only a short fortnight ago? He had wanted to turn back the clock a brief half hour. But how far should the clock be turned back now? To the minute before he had accepted Philip Warner's offer of the command of the
Bonaventure.
Yet would he still have met Marguerite, soon enough. Well, then, to the moment before he had thrown his cutlass to Daniel Parke? He had done then what he had always done since, what he had believed to be right, at the moment, without any thought of the consequences. He had always been proud of that.

And he had left Green Grove this afternoon, in that spirit. It had been the most difficult decision of his life, especially knowing the shortness, as he also knew the vehemence, of her anger. But the plantation was hers, and she was entitled to be bitter, about what had happened to her, about her father, and about Lilian. Nor could he expect her to do anything but hate the Indians. So he had ridden away into the darkness, away from wife and children and wealth and prosperity, as she had commanded, with only his sword and his pistols and his faithful friend at his shoulder. As he had done before.