Caribbean (36 page)

“Don’t talk treason,” Clarissa snapped, and Will shot back: “Don’t you talk sheer nonsense,” and before they could retreat to the calming influence of their house, half owned by Isaac, half by Will, Clarissa had shouted in a loud voice: “You better leave us, Will. Today. You’re headed for the gallows.”

Will, not one to point out that she was dismissing him from a house that was half his, stalked back to their dwelling in silence, grabbed together such belongings as he had, and departed for his sister’s home above the drapery shop run by her husband, Timothy Pennyfeather.

In 1650 the various political storms in Little England accelerated into hurricanes, for on the third of May the men like Thomas Oldmixon governing the island in a de facto manner declared the entire island loyal to King Charles II, the uncrowned claimant who was still in protective exile in France. But all of England remained under the control of the Roundhead Parliament and most of the North American colonies were obedient to its rule. Even the majority of the British islands of the Caribbean had turned against the Royalists, but here was stout little Barbados defying overwhelming adverse power and declaring that it would remain loyal to the new king until the rest of the world regained its senses. The Bahamas and certain Royalists
in the southern American colonies let it be known that they, too, sympathized with the action of Barbados, which made the distribution of power about ten for Barbados, ten thousand for Parliament.

But Oldmixon and his optimistic Cavalier planters never wavered. As soon as news spread through the island that the decision had been made, noisy support came from every corner, and thoughtful Royalists began to collect guns and ammunition against the day when an enemy fleet might appear off Bridgetown and attempt a landing and an occupation. Oldmixon, supported by his eager aide Isaac Tatum, started drilling troops; small fortresses were erected; watches were maintained.

Open warfare was avoided principally because sensible Roundheads like Saltonstall kept their tempers under control, convincing themselves that Cromwell’s men in London would not let them down, but four days after Oldmixon’s decision to deliver Barbados to the king’s defense, his Cavaliers received exhilarating support, for a ship arrived with news that excited Oldmixon and his supporters: “Cromwell’s government is sending out a new governor. Named Willoughby and said to be a secret Royalist.”

But an ordinary seaman, a surly fellow with his hair cut Roundhead style, quietly warned such islanders as he met: “Careful of Lord Willoughby. He changes sides so fast that watchin’ him makes you dizzy. Cavalier? Roundhead? Who can say which he is today or will be tomorrow?”

Three weeks later, when Francis, Fifth Baron Willoughby of Parham was rowed ashore from an incoming ship, the waterfront was lined to watch his imperial arrival, and they saw in the prow of the little craft a handsome man standing very erect, sword at his side, sash across his breast, exuding an air of “Here I come to take command,” and in the fast-paced days that followed, the islanders learned that their noble lord had indeed been three times a fanatic Cavalier, three times an equally determined Roundhead. In his latter incarnation he had once commanded troops obedient to the Parliament; in his former, he had been Speaker of the House of Lords and vociferously supportive of the king. Finally trapped in his contradictions, he had been sentenced to the Tower for hanging, but escaped by fleeing to Holland, where he loudly proclaimed that he had always been Royalist at heart. Incredible as it seemed at the time, after the beheading of Charles he once again served Cromwell, and it was a tribute to his flexibility in big affairs of state and his integrity in the little
affairs of daily living that both Cavalier and Roundhead not only liked him, but actually trusted him in whatever position they gave him. He was a miracle of his age and exactly the kind of level-headed pragmatist Barbados needed at this time.

As soon as he had established headquarters he summoned Oldmixon, and let it be known that he, Lord Willoughby, intended pursuing exactly the course that Oldmixon had initiated. Then, on the latter’s advice, he selected Isaac Tatum as his principal aide, and thus began Isaac’s rise to power. Soon, he and Clarissa acquired from a sugar planter who was in disfavor because of his troublesome defense of Parliament a batch of eleven more slaves … at a thieving price which Isaac was able to enforce because he had arranged for the man to be sent into exile.

With that lucky boost, Isaac appropriated in rapid succession three small plantations adjacent to his by the simple expedient of continuing to initiate moves which ended in the owners’ deportation. With these forced departures he gained more slaves, until Oldmixon told him one evening as he and the Tatums were dining in the former’s big house: “Isaac, you’re well started. But I must warn you—take steps to consolidate your holdings, for otherwise you might lose ’em all if Lord Willoughby is ever forced to leave the island and conditions revert. They have a way of doing that, you know.”

When Isaac asked: “How do you protect yourself?” Oldmixon said from experience: “Get papers which prove the lands are legally yours.” And taking that advice, the Tatums spent the summer of 1650 maneuvering so that Lord Willoughby was practically forced to issue papers which confirmed the Tatums in their ownership of the lands they had acquired in various questionable ways. In October of that year everyone among the leadership on Barbados and especially the Tatums thanked their good fortune that Lord Willoughby had organized the island according to Royalist principles and issued land titles which clarified who owned what.

And then the Barbadian peace was shattered. Cromwell’s men, having grown tired of the travesty of allowing this little island to ignore the rules that governed the rest of Great Britain, had issued orders to one of its finest admirals, Sir George Ayscue: “Assemble a great fleet, sail to Barbados and reduce it to obedience. You are both authorized and commanded to land troops, surprise their forts, force the islanders to submission, beat down their castles and places of
strength, and seize all ships and vessels belonging to them or any other ships trading there.”

When word of these draconian orders reached Barbados they did not, strangely enough, cause panic, for the islanders were secure in their belief that even though small and alone, they could stand against the entire British force of arms and send Admiral Ayscue scuttling back to England. At a dinner the host, Lord Willoughby, the week after the news arrived, told Oldmixon and Tatum: “Sir George is an able seaman, and he’ll get his fleet into the harbor down there, proper enough. But how will he land his troops? And if we deny him landing, what will his men eat? Where will they get their water? Mark my words, he’ll wait here four or five months, then hurry on to Virginia and try to discipline them. Hold on! That’s all we have to do, hold on, till England recovers her senses.”

After this strategy had been refined, and heartily approved, a toast was drunk to “King Charles II, absent for the moment in France but soon to rule,” and then Milord said: “I do despise that name they’re trying to foist on us. Great Britain. Started in my father’s time when James Stuart ascended to the joint throne. ‘First and Sixt’ we always called him—King James First of England, Sixth of Scotland. But out of deference to Scotland, Wales and Ireland, the new name had to be Great Britain. What an ugly, formless pair of words, meaning nothing. We’re English, and our land is England, and I make bold to propose another toast: ‘To England. May she soon return to her senses.’ In the meantime, thank God for Little England.” And to that fine toast all raised their glasses.

When conversation resumed, Willoughby asked Isaac: “How’s your brother doing? Oldmixon here warns me he’s become a bit of a problem,” and Tatum replied: “He has, Milord. Fallen under the spell of Saltonstall. I see little of him, and would like to see less.”

“We must sort such relationships out, Tatum. Now then, this man Ayscue they’re sending is no fool. We’ll need all our wits to fend him off. But we shall do it,” and with this stern resolve he finished the report he had been working on before dinner. An exact transcription of his words illustrates the curious orthography of those times:

Some days later, a small ship put into Bridgetown with tremendous news, and desiring to inspirit his forces, Willoughby directed Oldmixon and Tatum to gather as many of the Cavalier planters as possible, and when the leading men of the island were assembled, he informed them: “Prince Rupert, the king’s nephew and the strategist behind all the battles the Royalists won, has been made Admiral of the Fleet, loyal to our new king in France, and he’s heading here to save us from Ayscue and his Roundheads.”

Rousing cheers greeted this information, for no military man then alive, regardless of his nation, had the exalted reputation enjoyed by this handsome, dashing prince upon whom destiny obviously smiled. His presence in the Caribbean could mean an enormous difference, and as the meeting continued the Cavaliers became more certain with each glass of ale consumed that Rupert would punish Ayscue and end the forthcoming war before it began. “It’ll be all over by Christmas,” Oldmixon predicted loudly, and with others making even more extravagant interpretations of what Rupert’s coming might mean, the heartened Cavaliers dispersed.

When Willoughby was alone, he mused: I may well die on this island, but I will never surrender it. Ayscue will have to fight his way ashore inch by inch. Oh! How shameful it would be if I were the man to lose this heavenly isle! Not me, not me!

His mind now turned to Prince Rupert and he desperately wished he had some local Cavalier he could trust, because he wanted to disclose the suspicions that haunted him. He certainly could not discuss sensitive issues with Thomas Oldmixon: Too blatant, too conceited, too lacking in judicious knowledge. And he had no taste whatever for any talk of serious matters with Isaac Tatum: Too sycophantic, too grasping … He considered these two adjectives, and shook his head: How damning. Could one speak worse of a friend?

He was thus forced to evaluate the coming tests without counsel, and his conclusions were bleak: Prince Rupert is a gallant man. I headed his ground troops twice during his great cavalry charges and once served afloat with him. He was a real man, as handsome as his uniforms. But Admiral Rupert! Dear God, I doubt if he knows one end of a ship from t’other. On a horse, a genius. On a ship, in charge
of a dozen other ships, a complete ass. We’re in deep trouble this night. Gods of war, pray for me.

His predictions concerning Rupert’s naval abilities proved accurate, for after an unconscionable waste of time, when the cavalry genius did finally head to the rescue of Barbados, he ran into minor troubles, as his navigator reported later:

What was worse, Rupert, while searching for Barbados, sailed his squadron headlong into the tail of a Caribbean hurricane off Martinique, and in the violent tossing about of his ships lost much of his force, including his gallant brother Maurice, also a land fighter. Ignominiously, he crept back to Europe, leaving Barbados in worse condition than when he started out to save it.

Admiral Ayscue was considerably more efficient than Prince Rupert, but even so, he required exactly one full year—October 1650 to October 1651—to organize, assemble, and train his fleet of seven vessels plus its two thousand troops and get them across the ocean to Barbados. In the meantime, the islanders appeared to be going about their business ignorant of the fact that beneath them rested a keg of black powder to which was attached a very long fuse slowly but resolutely burning toward the explosion point. Lord Willoughby continued to give entertainments at his rude mansion, where wealthy planters, who sold their new crops of sugar surreptitiously to ships sneaking in from Holland, assured one another that “this idiot Ayscue will never get his ships into the bay down there,” and increasing pressure was placed on Roundheads like Saltonstall.

But the apparent levity of these Cavaliers could not hide the fact
that they, too, felt increasing uncertainty as months passed and no Roundhead ships appeared on the horizon, while Roundheads asked with noticeable irritation: “Will the damned ships never arrive?” Meanwhile, both groups went to their chosen churches on Sundays as required by law, with ten times more worshipers attending the Church of England services than were gathered in the scattered chapels serving such dissidents as the Methodists and Quakers. Barbados continued to be a beautiful island, one of the most beautiful, but it was not a relaxed one.

The tension did not affect young Will Tatum, sixteen years old and enjoying his small room above the Pennyfeather shop on the main street of Bridgetown. Many reasons accounted for this: his sister was a gentle soul who tolerated his peculiarities in a way that his more proper sister-in-law never could; he found excitement and freedom in life along the waterfront; he appreciated for the first time the orderly Dutch quality of Bridgetown’s buildings, some of them squat stone affairs of great dignity, topped by red roofs, others, like the one the Pennyfeather shop occupied, built of dark wood properly joined; but mostly because of the delightful fact that in James Bigsby’s neat butcher-baker-kitchenware shop across the street there was a fourteen-year-old daughter Betsy, whose quiet smile and carefully attended braids set the hearts of several young men beating at a faster pace. She was a sober girl, reserved in public, soft-spoken with friends. She was never a blatant flirt like some of the other Barbados girls of the middle class, and she created a sense of well-being wherever she moved. Not so tall as Will, she complemented him perfectly, he thought, on the few occasions when he was able to stand beside her or speak with her by chance in the street; and frequently that year he had the warm fantasy of having her with him in four rooms above a little shop, like Nell and Timothy in theirs.