The King's Commission (43 page)

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Authors: Dewey Lambdin

BOOK: The King's Commission
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“So much for becoming the new Clive of India,” Alan spat.
“They had me goin' there for a minute, same as you, I expect. But once I had a chance to ponder it, I realized it's a forlorn hope at best,” Cashman admitted, stripping off his shirt to splash water on his face and neck to cool off. “No, there's more profitable places just as miserable in the world we could do more with. The Far East, India, China. Could we get Capetown away from the Dutch, we'd be better off. Though, I could get to like it around here if it weren't for the Rebels up north. Or so many bloody Injuns down here. If they were a little more civilized, just a touch, it'd do fine for me.”
“Go native?” Alan mocked.
“Not a bit of it,” Cashman chuckled. “Look around here. See how rich this soil is. Ever see cotton grown?”
“No.”
“The East Indies and Egypt's full of it, and it's the coming thing, now we've the water-power looms and such back in England,”
Cashman enthused, kneeling to scoop up a handful of dirt. “River-bottom land is the best place to grow it, with long hot summers, just like here. I'd stake me out about a shire's worth of land, plant cotton, and cut the distance from India to the mills in half. Bring some Samboes from the East Indies over to tend to it. Corn, horses, pigs, cattle, fruit, sugar cane, you name it and I'd farm it. And while I'm about it, I'd get me a regiment of
sepoys
from the Far East to guard it. No more English troops who die so fast in such a climate. Sikhs or Mahrattas, Bengalis or lads from the Coromandel coast. They're used to hot, wet weather and sweat. And one thing in their favor, they're civilized, in their own fashion, not like these swamp-runners. Then you'd see this land take off and flourish! That's the way to become the new Robert Clive!”
“What about the Indians, then?” Alan smiled.
“That's their own lookout, isn't it?” Cashman replied.
“There's plenty of streams and rivers,” Alan said. “Why not put your looms here, then, if you're going to bring over East Indians? Do the whole manufacturing process in one place?”
“By God, that's not such a bad idea, Alan!” Cashman agreed. “Look here, even if the Dons keep the place, a man could do a lot worse than settin' up in these parts. Cotton and flax together, looms and mills, dye-works, ready-made beddings, shirts, everything right here, even our own ships to transport the goods. We'd make thousands, millions of pounds. How'd you like to be a landed gentleman, with a fleet of merchantmen? A big house grand as the bloody Walpoles, bigger'n St. James's if you've a mind? Sure, it's trade, but given a choice of bein' a poor gentleman'r a rich lower-class tradesman, I'd take rich any day. B'sides, once you're
nabob
rich, the gentlemen'll catch your farts for you like you was royalty.”
“With a harem in the west wing?” Alan laughed.
“We'd be so wealthy we could rotate 'em in platoons every month,” Cashman hooted. “Wouldn't take much to set up, should it. Cotton and flax seed, seed-corn from the Creeks, and we're in business. Maybe only a few Hindus at first, just to get things started.
Sepoys
'd work cheap as a private troop to guard the place. God knows ‘John Company' pays 'em little enough as it is. What do ya say, Alan? Want in on it?”
“It's tempting.” Alan grinned at Cashman's daydreams. “But we're both impoverished. No way we could settle here, not the way things are.”
“It's just as big a dream as Cowell's, and more profitable in
the long run. I'll do it somewhere in this world, you see if I don't. And when I'm ready, I'll get in touch with you and we'll do it, damme if we shan't! Right?”
“Right!”
 
Every day for the rest of the week, they suffered through the council meetings, drank the White Drink and threw up, smoked pipes of
kinnick-kinnick
until their tongues were raw, and listened to the high-pitched, formal orations of the Indian speakers as they wavered back and forth and all round the issue of whether to take up arms and help drive the Spanish out of Florida.
Some wanted no dealings with white men on any terms, and could not have cared less if all the colonists from Louisburg to St. Augustine got in their ships and sailed back where they came from. Some wanted to take the guns and stomp on the Cherokee and Chickasaws. There were questions about why the British didn't bring their troops and run out the Rebels up north, or take on the Spanish themselves.
It was maddening that any Indian of substance or reputation, no matter how lunatick his ideas, could get up and speak for hours, raising inane irrelevancies, which would have to be thrashed out completely before they got back to the main point. And, Cowell and his officers learned, chiefs and
mikkos
could not just decide and get on with business; they had to form a consensus of all parties involved, which took time to wear each other down until they were tired of arguing and gave in.
Alan's only consolation was to borrow a horse from McGilliveray's clan and go for a ride around the settlement during the afternoons, or ride Soft Rabbit in the corn-crib after supper. While he could not get his tongue to work around the guttural Muskogean words, he did have some success in teaching her some English, and showed her a few tricks he had picked up from whores he had known back in London. The days she spent doing the heavy chores for her owners were galling to him, and he had to own to a growing affection for her and her ways. She was sweet and modest in public demeanor, sweet and passionate in private, with an almost insatiable lust once the crib door was kicked shut for the night. Since he had so little part in the Creek council, he napped through most of the negotiations, or part of the afternoon before supper. It was the only chance for shut-eye that he got. How she ground corn, fetched and toted water and firewood, skinned and dressed hides and cooked during
the day, and then rogered all night and awoke fresh and full of energy amazed him.
After a few more boresome days spent heaving for the amusement and edification of the Muskogee, Alan finally called a halt and went hunting with his men, who had been growing restless for some time. English lads from the country did well enough to fill the pot, and the ex-soldier Tom went along to teach them some woods-craft.
They returned with several deer, one of them Alan's that he had hit with his fusil at seventy yards. He was damned proud of his shot through thick brush, and was looking forward to eating the bugger.
“Alan!” Cashman called as they entered the yard of the
huti
with their kills. “We're out of here!”
“Everyone finally give up?” he asked. “I say, Kit, come take a look at this. One shot, just behind the shoulder and down he went like he was pole-axed.” Alan stepped to the side of the horse that bore his kill to point out how well he had done.
“Damn the deer, man. They agreed,” Cashman insisted
“To what, actually?”
“If we give them the muskets and all the accoutrements, they go to war, on our side, soon's we land a regiment'r two.”
“But we have to land the guns and munitions first, I take it.”
“And show up with a fleet from Jamaica, and troops. But it's a start. And no matter how it turns out, we can get back to the coast and out of this place. Cowell's pleased as punch with himself.”
“And I suppose McGilliveray is trumpeting the Apocalypse,” Alan said, smirking. One blessing was that he had had much less to do with the man since he had started hunting by day and topping by night with Soft Rabbit. On a good day, he would only see him at the morning bath and breakfast, and didn't have to put up with his pontificating more than an hour.
“Well, he's mighty high in council now,” Cashman told him. “Not that he wasn't already. I don't know if they're all that keen on all his ideas about a Creek alphabet and teachers and such, but they finally saw the light about their future security. We may leave tomorrow.”
“Thank bloody Christ!” Alan exclaimed happily. “Another week of this, and my men would have gone native on me.”
“It's been all I could do to keep my troops on their toes, too.”
“Then let's eat this bloody deer of mine to celebrate.”
“Gad, yes, he's a big'un, ain't he? Nice shot. For a sailor.”
“We've bagged enough to feed the whole town, even the way they eat. He'll do for our mess, and we'll share out the rest. That ought to make the Muskogee turn back flips.”
The supper was very cheery, and the smell of roast meat floated from every
huti
cook-fire. McGilliveray's Muskogee relations ate with the white party in the yard between the winter house and the summer, all smiles and laughter and singing, so different from the usual stoic silence that Alan had thought was normal for Indians. Everyone seemed hellishly pleased with their new-struck bargain of support.
It was towards the end of the supper that one of McGilliveray's uncles on his mother's side came forward to sit before him on the ground and offer a pipe. They smoked, blowing the smoke to the cardinal points, and talked back and forth in Muskogean for some time apart from the others.
“Ah, Mister Lewrie, this concerns you, I fear,” McGilliveray said after the palaver was ended.
“Eh?” Alan asked, stuffed near to bursting and sleepy. “What the hell have I done now? I haven't offended them, have I?”
“Nothing serious.” McGilliveray grinned, and if McGilliveray found it amusing, Alan was sure he wasn't going to enjoy it; their dislike for each other by that time was hotly mutual. “But it seems Rabbit, the Cherokee slave girl, no longer has need to go to the woman's house.”
“The woman's house,” Alan said with a dubious look, missing the drift completely.
“Surely I don't have to lecture you on what it means when a girl's courses cease, sir.” McGilliveray beamed happily.
“What, you mean she's pregnant?”
“That is exactly what I mean, sir.”
“Well, so what, then?” Alan asked, unable to believe it. “You're sure this isn't a jape? She's really ankled? I mean, do I have to marry her or something?”
“It would help if you did.” McGilliveray chuckled.
“Well, I'm blowed, damme if I ain't,” Alan gasped. “I mean, what's the difference, she's just a slave, right?”
“She's my uncle's property, you see, so that makes her part of his clan, and of this
huti
, this lodge,” McGilliveray said, obviously enjoying every minute of it. “He would be insulted if you ran off and left your get. Marriage doesn't mean much in these circumstances, but it does preserve honor. If you don't, he can't sell her off, and he might come looking for you.”
McGilliveray's uncle, a side of beef with a round moon-face,
and a famous chief warrior, gave Alan a look as menacing as any he ever did see.
“He'll be stuck with a bastardly gullion, a bastard's bastard.”
“But the boy'll be some kind of Wind Clan Muskogee, so he'll do alright. Or her,” McGilliveray insisted.
“But we're leaving tomorrow, so …”
“Simple really. You shot that deer today? Go get a chunk of it.”
“Now look here, McGilliveray, this …”
“Did I tell you my uncle's name is Man-Killer?” McGilliveray smiled sweetly.
“Oh, holy hell.” Alan looked to Cashman, who was as amused as any of the others around their fire, laughing behind his hand. And damn their black souls, but Andrews, Cony, and the other seamen from
Shrike
were nudging each other and grinning at him openly! “It doesn't mean a damned thing, right? I mean, it doesn't really count, does it?”
“Even if she was properly Muskogee, it isn't official until the Green Corn Ceremony in late summer, and could be dissolved then. She'll gain status. Especially if you buy her from Man-Killer, and he adopts her as a daughter afterward. No more slavery for her then.”
“Oh, alright, then,” Alan sulked, burning with embarrassment at how funny everyone else seemed to think his predicament was. But he rose and fetched a large chunk of the deer from the roasting spits and brought it back to the fire-circle.
“This shows you're a man who can provide meat for her,” McGilliveray said. “She'll present
sofkee
and corn to you to show she can provide grain from the fields, and cook it for her man. Now, before she can be married, you must buy her from Man-Killer.”
There was much palavering, with a rant about how Man-Killer had gotten Rabbit in the first place, how he had slaughtered with the best of them and taken her from a traveling party of Cherokee hunting too far south of their mountain fastness, even if he was a little too far north of
his
usual haunts, poaching on Upper Creek lands.
Alan's bride cost him a dragoon pistol and saddle holster, with forty pre-made cartouches of round-shot and buck-shot, two of his deer hides Rabbit had already dressed, one of his shirts, and a leather cartouche pouch with George III's ornate brass seal on the flap. Alan suspected that buying the mort wasn't strictly necessary, since Man-Killer and McGilliveray/White Turtle both
seemed to be enjoying it so much, but there wasn't much he could do about it, so he went along sullenly.

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