Caribbean (37 page)

There is little in nature more lovely to watch, more reassuring to the human spirit, than the behavior of a pretty fourteen-year-old girl, newly aware of her powers, who wants to attract the approval of a sixteen-year-old boy. Softly she dances along the village street, in a dozen subtle ways she makes herself more attractive, her voice drops to a lower level, and her eyes run riot, sending new messages and startling promises never even dreamt of before. This year the knowing citizens of Bridgetown watched with amused approval as the proper daughter of their storekeeper took notice of the Tatum boy and practiced on him her yet-tentative arts of coquetry.

Will, himself awakened by the experience, was encouraged to speculate on such matters by the fact that his sister was big with child that autumn, and he marveled that she could move about and tend customers when so heavily burdened, and the more he studied Nell, the more he appreciated Betsy, imagining her going about in the same manner with his child. It was a confusing, instructive period in his life, made more perplexing by the arrival in the harbor of Captain Brongersma’s
Stadhouder
, and when he grabbed a rowboat to be first aboard the intrepid trader, he found its captain a much-sobered man.

“Lad, we had a sorry chase after we left you last. Saw this rich Spanish prize, overtook her easily, boarded as usual, and I was leading our men when suddenly a company of well-armed soldiers that had been kept in hiding leaped at us from nowhere—and I want you to see what happened.” Taking Will out onto the deck, he showed him the sun-bleached stains where Dutch blood was spilled after the Spanish soldiers reversed tables and boarded the
Stadhouder
, with deadly effect.

“We might have lost our ship,” Brongersma said sadly when he returned to his cabin, “but when that threatened, our men proved valiant. Cut … slash … fire the gun down his throat … back we drove them to their own ship. And off it sailed to Sevilla, off we limped back to Amsterdam.”

This conversation had a profound effect on Will Tatum, and during the next days people in Bridgetown saw the boy suddenly stop in the middle of a path to engage in imaginary warfare against the Spanish: “Cut, slash, fire the gun down his throat, back we drove them.” He never visualized the Dutch defeat, nor the dead men on the
Stadhouder
’s deck; he could think only of the glory. But so obsessed did he become with this story that one day he quietly arranged for Betsy Bigsby to accompany him out to the ship, and Captain Brongersma fell in love with her: “What a tidy little mistress … those golden braids! Ah, that I had a daughter like you!”

He spent the better part of an hour showing her the mementos he had acquired in sailing the various seas, and when she asked about running blockades, he told her: “See that man aloft? He watches for the arrival of English warships, and when he sees one he shouts out ‘Danger west!’—and off we hurry, because we can sail faster than your English ships can.”

“But if you’re unlawful,” she asked in her small, inquisitive voice, “why do the Englishmen ashore welcome you so heartily?” and he
asked: “What’s your father do, missy?” and she said: “The store on the big street that sells everything.” He laughed: “Ah, yes! You ask your father why he’s so happy to see me come,” and she looked at him bewitchingly and whispered: “Don’t you think I know?”

Will had questions of his own about fighting against Spaniards, and in sharp, brief responses the Dutch freebooter summarized what life aboard the
Stadhouder
was like: “Fifteen days’ run in the sun, nothing but work. Ten days in calm, row like hell. Three days in a storm, bail and pray. Then you spot a Spanish ship, but you can’t catch her. Then you do catch one, but she’s guarded by troops. Then you flee an English patrol boat. Finally, if God smiles, you come upon an unprotected Spaniard loaded with silver, and the long trip’s been worth the effort.” He dropped his voice: “But only if you’re brave when boarding time comes.”

Betsy Bigsby, listening intently, shivered at the thought of bloodshed, but from the corner of her eye she saw that Will was leaning forward eagerly, his eyes ablaze, and as they left the ship she said: “Captain, I think you may have found a new hand,” and Brongersma threw his arm about Will.

In mid-1651 the tempo on Barbados accelerated, and apprehension about when Ayscue’s fleet might arrive goaded the Cavaliers surrounding Lord Willoughby to pass harsh measures which he would never have proposed if left to his own decisions. All known Roundheads were removed from positions of influence; Cavaliers were organized into regiments and trained in tactics for repelling landing forces; and in a move which shocked the island, the principal Roundhead leaders were stuffed onto a boat and shipped back to England. Will Tatum halted his quiet courtship of Betsy Bigsby long enough to ride out to Henry Saltonstall’s plantation on the hill east of town to say farewell to that honorable man as he vacated the stone house his father had built, and both men were close to showing tears when they parted.

“Look after the plantation,” Saltonstall said before he mounted his horse and rode down to the waterfront and exile.

The ship had not left harbor before Isaac Tatum had come to claim Saltonstall’s property, and he had with him, in Clarissa’s care, papers certifying that “the property once known as Saltonstall Manor, owned by the notorious traitor Henry of said name, is attainted
and turned over to the ownership of Isaac Tatum, loyal servant of King Charles II and officer in the Leeward Regiment, said ownership to be perpetual to said Tatum and heirs.” The Tatums slept in their new home that night, and each had dreams of endless honors in the years ahead, for when the Saltonstall lands were added to those he and Clarissa had already acquired, the Tatums were going to have one of the top three or four Barbados plantations, every field laden with sugarcane.

But when Roundhead friends alerted Will Tatum, asleep in his little room above the drapery store, to the ominous news that his brother had appropriated the Saltonstall house and lands, he borrowed a horse, rode out to the estate, and banged on the door till his brother appeared: “What have you done, Isaac?”

“Only what the law provides. Henry Saltonstall is a proved enemy of the king and has been banished forever. His lands have been attainted and passed on to me, as a loyal servant.”

Will was so outraged by his brother’s arrogant behavior that he sprang at him, and there would have been a serious altercation had not Clarissa appeared in her nightgown, with a peremptory shout: “Will, what are you doing?” and when tempers cooled she gave her young brother-in-law sober advice: “I’ve been watching you, Will. You’re headed for trouble, the most serious trouble. Barbados is to be Cavalier, now and forever, and there’ll be no place for you. Why don’t you leave the way Saltonstall and those others did?”

Will’s jaw tightened: “You stole my land from me, and the other little pieces from men who couldn’t protect themselves. But by God, you’ll not steal Mr. Saltonstall’s land. I’ll not allow it.” But as he stomped off to his borrowed horse he heard Clarissa’s sharp threat: “Will, you used the Lord’s name in vain. You’ll hear from the church authorities.”

In the days that followed, while Will sought in vain for some way to reverse the usurpation of his friend’s property, he forgot his sister-in-law’s threat, for Nell was about to give birth. It was he who ran for the midwife and tended the shop until the baby was born, and it was he who stood by the bed when the baby was nestled in his sister’s loving arms. “He’s to be called Ned, and if anything happens to Timothy, you’re to look after him.” Hands were shaken across the bed, and Will even stooped down to shake the infant’s tiny hand as if to confirm that now his nephew was his responsibility.

That night, in a confusion of happy and tense emotions, he
roamed the streets of Bridgetown, looking at the trim houses, the prosperous shops and the reassuring English ships idling with their copious goods coming into Barbados and their holds heavy with sugar heading out, for despite the threats of naval warfare, commerce had to move. Talking aloud to himself, he tried to sort out the thoughts swirling in his head: “I don’t want to go into exile like Mr. Saltonstall, I like this island. And I don’t want to leave Betsy. And if the promised ships ever arrive out there, certain Cavaliers are going to be knocked in the head.” He was almost determined at that moment to move to the windward side of the island where a number of Roundhead adherents were forming a regiment to oppose the Cavaliers if fighting began, which it threatened to do. But he remembered his discussions aboard the Dutch freebooter: Now, that’s a life! A man with spirit could have excitement on such a ship. Then common sense took over: I promised Nell I’d look after Ned, and I certainly want to look after Betsy, if she’ll have me. And now the overriding question which was tormenting far more Barbadians these days than merely Will: But what to do when the Roundhead ships arrive?

The suspense ended on 10 October 1651, when Admiral Ayscue’s fleet of seven ships and two thousand fighting men hove to, some in the bay off Bridgetown, others well down the coast where the troops had a chance of landing unopposed. The great battle between land-based Cavaliers and shipbound Roundheads was about to begin.

While the rulers of Parliament were extremely desirous of humiliating Barbados to prevent the lingering sore of Royalist sympathy from spreading, they did not send to do this job some harebrained fire-eater who would storm ashore and shoot up everything in sight. With commendable English caution they nominated a remarkably stable man, veteran of peaceable negotiation rather than military bombast, and from the first moment Sir George Ayscue drew within sight of Barbados, he acted with exemplary restraint. Indeed, he stood offshore during most of October, all of November and much of December, hoping to gain a peaceful settlement of differences. His patience worn by Willoughby’s sturdy defiance, he finally came ashore with his two thousand men, and desultory engagements ensued without much loss of life—poor bumbling Timothy Pennyfeather being among the few casualties.

In them, Thomas Oldmixon behaved gallantly for the Cavaliers, as did Isaac Tatum, but with only just enough courage to allow himself to be seen in the fighting but never close enough to the Roundheads
to be damaged by them. Will Tatum, on the other hand, took heroic steps to make contact with the invading force and fight along with it. He gave such a good account of himself that when the Roundheads returned to their ships for safety and supplies, they took him with them as a valued guide, and in that capacity he informed them about the confiscation of Henry Saltonstall’s plantation. “That will soon be corrected,” Ayscue’s men promised. However, the gentlemanly fighting did not resume, for both Willoughby and Ayscue realized that each could do great damage to the other, but that neither was going to win an outright military victory. Accordingly, as early as the second week in January 1652, the two sides met in a historic series of sessions in the Mermaid Tavern at the port town of Oistins, where they contrived one of the most sensible and just documents ever to end a war. In grave, conciliatory terms the governor and the admiral stated the principles on which Little England, too beautiful an island to destroy, would henceforth be governed, and some of the terms would resound in British history:

Article 20 contained an unusual provision: That since most of the island’s troubles had been caused by “loose, base and uncivil language,” a law be passed “with a heavy penalty” forbidding “any reviling speeches remembering or raveling into former differences and reproaching any man with the cause that he formerly defended.”

In other words, let peace return to Little England and let past animosities be buried deep in memory. The strategy of these two just leaders worked; citizens of Barbados were still Cavalier or Roundhead but they did not flaunt their differences, and certainly no man abused the other for his past preferences. But it must not be thought that all deviousness of human nature was either purified or suppressed, for when Will Tatum, clutching in his left hand a copy of Article 17, hurried out to Henry Saltonstall’s forfeited estate, demanding that it be returned to his custodianship, Isaac and Clarissa primly informed him that the Saltonstall case was different and that a secret agreement between Willoughby and Ayscue had exempted from the general amnesty that estate and two others that Isaac had seized. When Will, now a husky young fellow, threatened his brother, Clarissa warned him that Article 20, which forbade rough speech against former enemies, would be a cause for jailing, and he could do nothing but retreat, leaving his brother in possession of the plantations he had stolen.