The Long Song (17 page)

But then they were shot anyway, those gutless black Moses, Cupids and Ebo Jims, for who would want them back after this? When slaves turn wild, they are useless to all but worms. And there would be compensation for the owners for the loss of their property.

The bamboo still smouldered lively, but those rebel slaves upon Castle Estate were quelled. And how they strutted—those gallant white men of Trelawny Interior Militia—not soldiers, not redcoats, but, oh, a force to be feared upon this island.

It was later, as John Howarth and Tam Dewar made their way back to the barracks for regrouping, that they found themselves split from the main body of their militia, riding the town road with two other men who were gossiping this Castle Estate episode into quite a heroic tale to tell. At the bend in the road, where it narrows to barely a path, they heard a woman screaming. A white woman. Most white men upon this island believe the sound to be quite different from that of a negress; the cry is softer, higher, and has a more melodious cadence, even when pitched with the same terror. Now the holler of a negress could go unmarked, but a white woman screaming must be investigated by the militia. So they turned off the road with some haste.

Soon, there before them, in front of a small house with a neat garden, was the white woman. A red-headed woman, whom Howarth often saw about the parish—indeed, a woman who so reminded him of his late wife Agnes, that on two occasions he was forced to acknowledge her when she caught him staring upon her.

Now she was raging, hollering, and jumping. This woman at once clutched at her loose and tangled hair, then fell to her knees, banging upon the ground with her fists, before she was back upon her feet, arms outstretched with imploring. In front of her, sitting tied to a chair, motionless, limp and slumping to one side, was her husband—the Baptist missionary of this parish—Mr Bushell. Usually quite blond and pink of face, now this man’s skinny naked body was black, for he was daubed with slimy tar. And the blood-dirty feathers that quivered over him, from his head to his toe, made him appear, at swift glance, like a freshly flayed negro.

The missionary’s two small sons, dressed in their stripey bed-shirts, clung together in the open doorway of their house, too astonished at the sight before them to cry. For encircling this scene upon horse-back were, it appeared, nine badly dressed, burly white women. And one of these women was attempting, with breathless panting, to lasso the seated man. The boys gasped every time the looping rope soared down to strike their father like a lash, before being pulled back for another clumsy attempt to capture him. When, at last, the rope finally caught, it tightened to topple the missionary, who thumped to the ground in a cloud of grit and dirt.

Howarth dismounted his horse. He ran to the missionary and pulled off the binding rope before he was dragged along the ground by it. ‘What’s happening here?’ Howarth yelled at the female riders.

Yet it was the bass tones of a male voice that answered him saying, ‘Leave alone, Howarth. He deserves this. All this slave trouble about us is his doing. We’re teaching him a lesson. This is our affair.’

The missionary’s wife fell to her knees in a faint. Suddenly Howarth, peering from one assailant to the other, realised that they were not women atop those horses, but white men bundled into skirts, bodices and bonnets for tricky disguise.

Now, by the entrance to Belvedere Pen, John Howarth and his companions had earlier that day passed by the putrefying bodies of sixteen dead slaves. ‘The stench was discernible from quite a distance—near the actual spot it was almost overpowering.’ One of his compatriots would later report.

These slaughtered slaves, shot by another militia for good reason, as would also be established, had been rotting in the sun for a few days. The carrion crows, in a squabbling tempest of black wings, were wrenching at sinews, pecking at crusty drying entrails, and cleaning a leg bone to bright white as John Howarth came upon the corpses. He shooed the birds. Bucked his horse into the affray until the crows soared like a thunder into the air; which just left a filthy shroud of flies and maggots feasting. But the discussion among this militia group of who should bury these dead negroes ended with John Howarth shrugging away the task as unnecessary. They rode on, leaving the crows to return, greedy, to the carnage.

Half-way between the town and Shepperton Pen, they had come upon a naked slave woman, tied to a coconut tree by her arms. As her feet could not reach the floor, she was slowly spinning in the sun’s heat. Dangling juicy as roasting meat upon a spit, crows kept pecking at her to test her as food. As she spat and kicked to shoo them, she would start to spin faster. She had been beaten before being tied up—with a stick or a short riding whip—for her skin, dusty and black, was in places torn off, creating a speckled pattern that appeared like dappled sunlight upon her. John Howarth frowned to himself, briefly, as he pondered upon the crime this negro must have committed for her to be given such a public disciplining. And then he rode on.

John Howarth did shake his head in mild reproach at the punishment of a negro boy they came across. The small boy had been running with messages to rebel slaves—a crime—there was no doubt in Howarth’s mind upon that. But the boy was then sealed into a barrel which was roughly pierced with over twenty-five long nails hammered into the shell. The boy, still trapped within that spiky cask, was then rolled down a hill. Howarth believed this reprimand to be a little . . . wanton.

But, upon that day, the act that made John Howarth question his God for allowing such barbarity within a world he knew, and gasp at the cruelty of his fellows, while a righteous anger fermented within his belly until he felt sickened, ashamed and disgusted, was the sight before him now: nine white men dressed as women.

To John Howarth’s mind, those ugly-beauties atop their horses were what sullied the good name of Jamaican planters. Using the frippery of the fairer sex as diabolic disguise branded them all merciless, callous and depraved. Nine gentlemen dressed in a clutter of bonnets and petticoats urged to humiliate, torment and torture a fellow white man before his children, before his wife. Tarring and feathering a man of God. A missionary. A Christian soul! To John Howarth this was cruelty beyond all reason. This was shame.

‘Stop this at once,’ he bellowed at that ludicrous group, ‘this is savagery.’

‘Leave alone, Howarth. Go about your business,’ came in petulant reply. And although John Howarth was staring upon a fat strumpet crowned in a blue turban with a feather that dangled like a dilberry from it, he at once identified the voice; it was that boring old attorney from Unity; he who had been supping at his table not a few days before.

‘Mr Barrett. I know you and this is not the act of gentlemen. No matter what this man has started, he does not deserve this,’ Howarth yelled at him.

Suddenly there was great commotion ‘Whose side are you on, Howarth? . . . Don’t give names away . . . On your way, on your way,’ was shouted from that bevy of jack-whores.

And in those angry faces Howarth saw George Sadler—that idiot from Windsor Hall—wearing a red stole and a gypsy bonnet. Had all left his table to raid their wives’ closets for this odious masquerade? ‘Have you no pity? Have you no shame? This is a man of God,’ Howarth pleaded with them.

Someone spat upon the ground to his left before saying, ‘This man is no better than a nigger.’ And Howarth leaped up to grab that man from his horse. Pulling fierce upon the rider’s leg, the man in a jumble of skirts and ripping cloth, tumbled to the ground.

In the scuffle that ensued, Howarth grasped a matted scrap of a wig from this man’s head, and the bookkeeper from a neighbouring plantation was revealed, staring quite sheepish upon him. Until, that is, he lunged to punch the most painful blow upon Howarth’s face. Howarth reeled back, holding his nose to catch the spout of blood that gushed from it as if tipped from a jug. Another man who had dismounted, held up his skirts, dainty as a madam, before kicking Howarth. ‘Leave us, we’re taking care of this. It is all deserved,’ was yelled, while a pistol was waved in Howarth’s face.

It was Tam Dewar who had to pull John Howarth out of this affray. Like a small boy snatched from some tomfoolery by a nursemaid, he felt his overseer lift him from the ground and carry him to his horse. Still cursing and swearing those nine gentlemen as whore-sons, John Howarth was led away.

And the dazed wife of Mr Bushell, seeing them leaving while her husband still lay in a pose of death wailed, ‘Come back. Mr Howarth, come back. Help him. Help us, please.’ But Howarth, forced to sit awkward upon his horse so his bloody nose could be held high, had to just ride on.

But of course, Tam Dewar said nothing of these incidents to Caroline Mortimer. So, quite blind to what John Howarth had encountered during those few bloody days in that Baptist War, Caroline could find no good reason why her brother should be in any fatal distress. Indeed, he had seemed perfectly at ease to her when he had found her.

She had been abandoned—like a stray dog!—upon the wharf in town by Godfrey, who, having pointed out the ship she must board, ran off to who knows where. Her brother, discovering her left quite alone during this difficult time, was a little agitated perhaps. For when she commenced recalling for him, in some detail, what had befallen her when left at the mercy of the house slaves, he had placed his hands over his ears and begged her to be quiet. But he had been doing that to her since she was a girl.

No. Caroline had seen her brother so downcast that he would not get from his bed for weeks. But of late, he had begun to bless each sunrise—she was sure of it. So when Tam Dewar, with some temerity, began to say, ‘If your brother has taken his own life . . .’ she replied, ‘But he has not, Mr Dewar.’ When he persisted with, ‘But if he has . . .’ she quite sternly and finally, she believed, ended the exchange by declaring, ‘But he has not!’

For Caroline Mortimer surely knew that as it was a crime as well as a sin for her brother to take his own life, she could stand to lose everything they held upon this island. Why, her neighbour when she still lived in London, Jane Glover, had lost her home, her prospects, and every penny that she ever had to squander upon those showy silk caps of hers, when her father was found dangling from a beam in their house. Jane Glover had everything seized! It was the talk of Islington for several months. Her father’s body was even refused a burial next to his wife’s at St Mary’s churchyard. Caroline could still recall the look of anguish upon Jane Glover’s face as she was driven away in a cart to be taken in by a cousin and used as a common housemaid!

Now, reader, no matter what you may have heard Caroline Mortimer declare as the next act in this story, for she gave her own fulsome account of that day to the militia, several magistrates, lawyers, and indeed anyone who ever graced her dinner table, this that I am about to tell you, is the truth of what occurred next within that bed chamber. Do not doubt me, for remember my witness still lies beneath the bed.