Flint and Silver

“What you do, girl?” she cried as she pulled Selena along. “You think you not like all women? You think you better? You … you … you …”

But her words failed. She’d never learned English very well and she switched to the liquid speech of her homeland, which the youngsters like Selena barely understood – for it earned the toe of the overseer’s boot to be heard “talking African”.

But this time Selena’s mother didn’t just speak it: she bellowed it. And since it was dusk, and the day’s work was done, the people came to the doors of their shacks as Selena was dragged by. They came to see what all the fuss was about. When they saw, they understood and they laughed or pitied according to their individual character. Mostly the men looked at Selena and licked their lips and thought their own thoughts, but the women screeched and laughed and slapped their sides in happy chorus.

“It’s your time, girl!” they cried. “Now you just like all the rest!” And they nodded to one another in righteous enjoyment at the fall of one who had put on such airs.

“Where’s Miss Jeanie?” they mocked. “You want me to call her from Paris?”

And the children hopped and capered along behind, laughing and mimicking, even though they didn’t understand. But they would, given a few years; especially the girls.

Yard by yard, Selena was hauled away from the neat line of shacks and out towards the big house. The crickets sang, the moon came out, the stars shone, and soon the children scampered back home with final jeers, for they were getting too near the big house, and knew better than to make trouble there.

The big house was ablaze with light and music. The master and mistress were entertaining. White-folk visitors were come from far away beyond the plantation, where no slave was allowed to go. There were carriages drawn up outside the big house, but that was at the front, which was forbidden to Selena and her mother. Instead, Selena was dragged the last few hundred yards to where Sam the overseer lived in his smart, plank-built house with the veranda and the whitewashed walls. Sam’s house stood way out from the shacks where the common folk lived, and close enough to the big house to be ready for the master’s call.

Sam was a greatly privileged creature. He wore shoes and a white man’s hat, and was even trusted with a gun, and now he sat with this badge of office across his knees as he rocked on his own porch.

Selena’s mother dragged her up the steps and brought her before Sam. He was a big, hard young man, chosen for his ability to knock down any other slave with his fists. But he smiled and shook his head in admiration of Selena.

“My oh my!” he said. “Ain’t you just ripe and ready.” He slid his hand into Selena’s cotton dress and reached for one of the hard breasts that were bouncing so appealingly as she struggled.

“No!” barked Selena’s mother, and caught Sam’s arm a blow with her fist. “She not for boy like you!”

Sam snarled and raised his musket butt to smash the woman flat. He was top dog and didn’t take no crap from nobody.

“Hold you hand, nigger-boy!” cried the woman. “My Selena, she be Master’s girl – yes? Master do what she say – yes? Selena say, ‘Flog Sam black ass’ – Master flog Sam black ass!”

Sam froze. It was true. It could happen. So long as the master’s fancy lasted, he’d give a girl most everything she wanted … especially if it was so little a thing as flogging an uppity slave. Sam had seen too many floggings to suffer one on his own sweet hide. He doused his anger and lowered his gun.

He said nothing, but got up and led the way to the “special house” down in the hollow by the river, among the trees and out of sight of the big house, where it had been placed by a thoughtful husband to spare the blushes of his wife. What the mistress did not have positively thrust before her eyes, she could contrive not to know. Indeed, as far as the mistress was concerned, what went on in the house in the hollow served the invaluable purpose of focusing her husband’s attentions where they would do the most good and the least harm.

Sam had the keys to the special house. He unlocked the door and lit the candles inside. He looked sidelong at the two women to see their wonder at the fine things on display, things no field slave ever saw: the curtains, carpets and furniture, the silks, satins and linen, the wines and food, the big bed, the great mirrors and the gold-framed paintings of naked white women, luscious and plump. Tonight there was also a big bathtub, with water, soap and towels, and a selection of brightly coloured dresses.

“Now you get that girl ready, you hear?” said Sam, for the benefit of his dignity. “You get her clean and dressed up right pretty, or it gonna be your black ass gets flogged!” With that, he straightened his shoulders and marched off, master of the field.

Selena’s mother sighed.

“Get you clothes off, girl.”

“No!”

“Get you clothes off. How me clean you, if you not take off clothes?”

“Take me home. I wasn’t bred for this!”

“No! You stay here. You stay!”

“Why?”

This simple question finally broke the dam of Selena’s mother’s emotions. The woman burst into loud slobbering tears and called Selena a wicked girl who’d see her ma and pa sold away and all her brothers and sisters too.

“Sold away!” cried Selena’s mother, voicing the dread fear of the plantation slave. “Sold downriver. Me never see you. Me never see me man. Me never see me childrens. Never never never. That what you want? You creature!”

“No!” screamed Selena, and stamped her foot. “But why should it be me?”

“ ‘Cos Master want you. That why he let you live in the big house! That why you get fancy clothes and fancy words. You got them ‘cos he want you for fancy piece!”

“No! Miss Eugenie – Jeanie – she loved me!”

“Huh! She love you when you small. You was her nigger doll. And now she gone to Paris for schooling and left you behind when she could’ve taken you with!”

“No!”

“No? So why you back in fields? Why you sleep in Mumma’s house and not Miss Jeanie’s room?”

“It’s all your fault! You told me to smile at the master in the first place!”

Selena’s mother bit her lip and the strength drained out of her indignation.

“Well,” she said, searching for words. She searched hard and came up with a powerful word: a white man’s word. “I told you to smile ‘cos it proper,” she said, and nodded in satisfaction.

“Huh!” sneered Selena. “ ‘Proper’, you say? I say you just want all the things I can get you while I’m the master’s girl!”

If a woman with skin the colour of black velvet could have blushed, then Selena’s mother would have done it. Since this was impossible, she took her daughter by the hair, stripped her naked, lifted her bodily into the bathtub, and doused and soaped and scrubbed the slippery body as if she’d have the skin off it. Then she laid on with the towels, bound up the girl’s hair to look nice, and crammed, jammed and rammed her into the first dress that came to hand.

“Now hear me, Selena,” she said, with a face as grim as a bulldog’s. “Me don’t want no more. You always stamping and cussing. You always having you way. Me always let you. Me let you, ‘cos you fine and you pretty.”

She stood back, hands on hips and leaned forward so her nose was an inch from Selena’s.

“Now you pay me back, girl,” she said. “You bump you ass for Master. You bump real good. You think on me. You think on you father. You think on you brothers and sisters.” In a final burst of anger, her voice screeched in fury, hitting a pitch previously unsurpassed. “If you not do, then no place for you in me house. Not food, not fire, not water. Nothing! NOTHING! You hear me?”

There was silence as the two looked at one another, balked in anger. Then, seeing the faintest flicker of a downcast eye from Selena, and seeing that the girl made no move to run, the mother said, “Huh!” loudly. Then she cleaned up the bath things, made everything neat and tidy, hauled the bath outside and emptied it, and marched off back to her own place, and her husband, and the rest of her eight surviving children.

She was a good woman. She was doing her best, under iniquitous rules, for all those who depended upon her. She was the exact moral equal of a noble commander who wins glory by sacrificing a regiment to save an army. She wept all the way home, nonetheless.

Left alone, Selena first did some weeping of her own. Then she threw some things about and broke glass and china. Then she looked at herself in a mirror, admired the incredible gown, and then she sat down on the big bed to think. Ideas sped and tumbled through her head with the wild energy of a sharp and penetrating brain. But she saw no way out, other than the one her mother had specified.

Thus she came to a decision. First she brought herself to face and accept her betrayal by Miss Eugenie. She cleared that monstrously difficult fence with valiant courage and with maturity beyond her years. She did it all by herself and with none to advise her. Next, she accepted her duty to her mother, to her father and to her family. Finally she lay back on the bed, spread her gown to best advantage, and waited for the master. But the master did not come, and eventually, being unused to staying awake at the end of a hard day’s work, Selena closed her eyes and went to sleep.

She was awakened by a fumbling at the front of her gown and a man’s drink-loaded breath wheezing in her face. A fat belly pressed down upon her with the buckles of his clothes scratching. Hands squeezed her breasts and a foul mouth pressed on hers, licking and sucking.

At forty-six years of age, the master, Mr Fitzroy Delacroix, had long since established his etiquette where slave-girls were concerned. He liked them young, he liked them slim, he liked them full-breasted and he liked them virgins. The delight of slave-girls, to his way of thinking, was that you could do what you damn well liked to them, when you damn well liked, and not have to waste hours bringing them to the boil like you did with decent white women. As for whores, slaves beat them every time because you didn’t have to pay and you couldn’t get poxed.

Added to these usual benefits was the particular one that Selena had been his own daughter’s playmate, raised alongside her, and equipped with the speech and manners of a white girl to the degree that – for some time now – Delacroix had been just itching to get his hands on her. Thus it was very much the case that his daughter’s desire for a wider education and her hopes of fluency in the French language were far from Delacroix’s only reasons for sending Miss Eugenie to Europe.

Not sharing Delacroix’s point of view, Selena struggled furiously and got a ringing box round the ears in reply. Delacroix laughed and threw her skirts over her head. Holding her down by the wrists, he buried his nose into the soft recess between her thighs and gorged like a hog at a trough. Enjoying himself hugely, he rolled to one side to unbutton himself and haul out his shaft. But, freed from his weight, Selena leapt up and darted to the door … which was locked.

Delacroix positively roared with laugher, and staggered after her with his drawers round his ankles and his paunch wobbling over his upstanding lust. He grabbed at Selena, but he was full of drink and she ducked under his arms, snatched up a silver candlestick and swung it at his head. He just managed to raise his arms in defence and the blow thumped painfully into his left elbow. He fell back, stumbled and sat down heavily on the floor, legs stretched out in front of him.

“Ow!” he said, rubbing his elbow in surprise. “Well, I’m damned!” And he doubtless was, for those were his last words on earth.

With a huge quantity of food and drink in his stomach, and sick from the pain of the blow, Delacroix suddenly vomited heavily, gulped and choked … and inhaled a good lungful of half-digested beef and claret. He then throttled and kicked for a minute or two, before expiring purple-faced and pop-eyed at Selena’s feet, with his tongue lolling out of his open mouth.

Philosophers would argue that Delacroix was entirely responsible for his own death – and a shameful death too – from gluttony and attempted rape, but Selena knew that the world would see things differently. A slave found with her dead master was just meat on the hoof. They’d not ask her what had happened. They’d simply hang her.

Fear and panic surged out of the dark corners of the room. There was no refuge on the plantation. They’d hang any slave who tried to help her, and her mother’s house was the first place they’d look – even supposing for one minute that her mother would take her in. But beyond the plantation was the great, wide world: the outside world that Selena had never even seen, let alone visited. And now she had to get out into that world and make her way, and not get caught. And all she had to guide her was her own native wit.

Chapter 10

24th March 1749 The island

On the morning after his secret conference, when Flint had taken his irreversible step and now stood at risk of betrayal by too many men for him to face down, he went to Captain Springer.

The man was sunk beyond belief in drunkenness. As far as Flint could judge, Springer was a worse hulk than Elizabeth. He was decayed and rotting in his tent. Flint sighed. By the look of Springer, this would delay vital preparations by a week or more; or at least by however long it took to get Springer off the rum and looking like some passably good imitation of an officer. But since Springer was unconscious, Flint went and found Springer’s servant and put Billy Bones to work, kicking the servant’s unfortunate arse around the camp for sufficient time to drive home the message that the captain was to receive no more strong drink, no matter what threats or entreaties he might offer.

In the event, Flint was lucky. Springer came from a tough old breed, and his liver was so powerfully exercised by its life’s work that it had him sobered up that very evening.

Then, after a day spent in blinding headaches and purgative vomits, Springer was fit to walk, talk and to be washed and shaved and put into a clean shirt by the morning of the day after. Flint duly presented himself at the captain’s tent, and – as his deputy and representative during the captain’s indisposition – he gave Springer an account of all the island’s news that was masterly in the very small proportion of untruth that was added in order to deceive Springer completely, and to set him off on the false trail that Flint had planned.

When Flint was done, and was standing humbly before his captain with his hat in his hands, Springer glared at him with bloodshot yellowed eyes and with hatred that could have been cut into blocks and sold by the pound as rat poison. But Springer knew his duty (or so he thought), and he never hesitated.

“Muster the men, you bloody lubber!” he growled. “This is your fault, as I’ve always said, and I’ll see you broke for it as soon as we rejoin the squadron!”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” murmured Flint, with downcast eyes. And after suffering a sufficient quantity of oaths and curses from Springer, Flint withdrew, found Billy Bones, and gave his final instructions.

Half an hour later, every soul on the island, excepting the four marines still guarding the useless blockhouse, were mustered on the beach under the hot sun, before the tented encampment and the almost-completed Betsy, while stuck on her sandbank a cable’s length off, the empty corpse of the Elizabeth was a constant reminder of past failures, and a spectator to what happened next.

Springer got up on a chest, the better to speak to the men. He sweated heavily in his uniform coat and cocked hat, and his shirt and stock. But these were the indispensable icons of his rank, especially given the shockingly ugly mood of the men. Springer had never seen the like before, and he stuck out his chin and clenched his fists in anger. He wasn’t the man to tolerate skulking and scowling from the lower deck, as they would bloody soon learn!

Around him, in their blue navy coats, stood Lieutenant Flint, Acting-Master Bones, and five midshipmen. The surgeon and the purser stood to one side of them, with a group of senior warrant officers including the boatswain, the gunner and the carpenter. Further off still was the comforting block of twenty-nine marines, drawn up with bayonets fixed, under Sergeant Dawson and two corporals.

Facing Captain Springer, divided into starboard and larboard watches, stood nearly two hundred lesser folk and foremast hands of the manifold varieties of their kind: topmen, coopers, waisters, cooks, afterguard, boys and so on. Springer ground his teeth at the muttering and scowling that came from them, and the insolence on their stupid faces.

“Avast there!” he bellowed. “Silence on the lower deck!”

They looked at him and waited, still defiant but listening to what he might have to say. When it came, it wasn’t very much, and it wasn’t very clever. Springer was no maker of speeches: he simply stamped and spouted and told them to do their duty and God help them as didn’t! Since the men had already been flogged and punished beyond all reason, this was the last thing they wanted to hear. But Springer didn’t know that, for Flint hadn’t told him, and finally, the captain got round to the subject of leaving the island.

“Our new ship lies a-waiting and ready to bear away for Jamaica!” he cried, pointing to the Betsy. “She’s well found and ship-shape and will bear fifty men …” At this there came a deep, animal growl from the belly of the crowd. “Silence!” yelled Springer, but all he got was a chorus from the play so lovingly crafted by Mr Flint, who nearly choked with laughter as his actors delivered their lines.

“What about the Dons?” cried one.

“What if they come back?” cried another.

“AYYYYYE!” the crowd roared.

“What?” yelled Springer. “What bloody Dons?”

“Them as was seen from Spy-glass Hill!”

“Them as was looking for a landing!”

“They’ll murder every man jack of them as gets left behind!”

Now other voices joined in, genuinely frightened of a mass slaughter at the hands of the Spaniards. Frogs and Dutchmen was one thing; even the Portuguese; but they’d get no precious mercy out of the Dagoes!

“Mr Flint?” said Springer, looking down at his subordinate. “What the poxy damnation are the sods blathering about?”

“I cannot imagine, sir,” said Flint with a sneer. “Why don’t you ask the men?” In that instant, seeing the look in the other’s eyes, Springer came as close as he ever did to understanding Flint and to guessing what was actually underway.

“You whoreson bastard!” he said, and he cast about, this way and that, wondering what to do next. He was the very picture of indecision, and to the angry mob in front of him, he looked exactly like a man who’d been found out.

“See!” cried Israel Hands. “The bugger knew it all along. He’s leaving us to the bloody Dons!”

“No!” cried Springer. “No! No! No! The ship’ll take a good fifty, maybe more, and I’ll come back for …”

“And who’s to say who goes and who stays?” cried George Merry, in wild terror. Swept on by the furious emotions around him, Merry – who in any case was not one of the brightest – was now so deep into the role given him by Flint, that he actually believed it.

“ARRRRRGH!” roared the crew.

“Sergeant Dawson!” screamed Springer, as the mob rolled forward. But Dawson was already giving his orders.

“Make ready!” he barked, and twenty-nine muskets snapped into the left hands of their bearers, enabling the right hands to cock the locks. A howl of fright went up at this show of deadly force.

“Bastards!” cried Israel Hands and, reaching the climax of his own part, he produced a hidden pistol: a little one, small enough to hide under his few clothes. He took a breath. He ran forward, and while the marine’s muskets were still pointing harmlessly upwards he let fly with his pistol.

“Ahhhh!” screeched a marine, and dropped his musket as the ball took him in the face and smashed his jaw. It was the first blood. The wretch continued to bawl and groan, but his mates straightened up, as they’d been taught, and faced their front.

“Present!” cried Dawson, and the muskets swept down to bear on the mob.

CRACK! Another shot came out of the mob: Black Dog this time, with the second of Flint’s own pair of pocket pistols. The ball flew nowhere. The cries of the mob became general, and a hail of two-pounder, swivel-gun shot (distributed earlier by Billy Bones) was thrown by muscular arms to arch up, and drop viciously down on the redcoats. One marine went down stunned. More shot flew and the mob charged.

“Fire!” cried Springer.

“Fire!” yelled Dawson.

BA-BANG-BANG-BOOM! Twenty-seven muskets blazed together at such close range that powder-flash singed the hair of the maddened seamen at the front of the mob, while Captain Springer hauled out his own pistol and discharged it at Israel Hands, who was running at him with a drawn knife.

Instantly, fifteen men went down, struck by musket balls, and Springer fell backwards off the chest with the thumb and two fingers blown off his pistol hand, and one eye put out by flying fragments of the burst barrel. Being half-blinded, he did not notice that Israel Hands simply ignored him, leapt over his fallen body, and ran off after Flint, Billy Bones, Black Dog, George Merry and about fifty others.

While these favoured ones vanished into the jungle at the edge of the beach, a hideous, murderous fight took place: marines, mids and warrant officers against the remaining seamen. It was bayonets, dirks and swords, against knives and fists. It was entirely hand-to-hand, for the marines had no chance to reload. Consequently the struggle between former shipmates lasted only as long as it took for all parties to exhaust their strength and fall back sickened by what they had done, or rather what they had most cunningly, deliberately and skilfully been caused to do, by Lieutenant Joseph Flint.

The final tally was forty-five dead, including most of the marines, Sergeant Dawson, Captain Springer, most of the mids, nearly all the warrant officers and a large number of seamen. Many more were wounded, some grievously. But there was a still worse moral effect of what had been done. This was to place the greater part of those alive entirely beyond the law, and in all probability under delayed sentence of death at the hands of the service they had just betrayed.

The surviving marines were safe. The two surviving midshipmen were safe, as were all the rest who’d fought for their King and his laws. But the rest had shared in a mutiny, and an extremely bloody one at that. They had been a part of the ultimate crime, the crime which the Royal Navy would never, ever forgive – they had slain their captain. They now faced either permanent exile from their native land or being hunted down for a naval court martial, and the short, jerking journey up the yardarm with the aid of a running noose.

Thus the survivors broke naturally into two parties that limped and bled and drew away from one another as far as they could go. The smaller party, perhaps thirty strong, consisted of the mids, the marines and the purser, plus those seamen and petty officers who’d remained loyal. This party had two muskets, a few pistols and a pair of midshipman’s dirks between them. The larger party, nearly two hundred strong, carried off the rest of the marines’ firelocks and ammunition. Being the stronger, they took command of the camp and immediately broke open the spirit casks and proceeded to get roaring drunk.

In this condition, they were later visited by Captain Flint, as he was now known, at the head of the only body of men on the island who were sober, under discipline, and fully armed from the supply of weapons thoughtfully hidden in the woods at Flint’s orders. Flint told his followers – Israel Hands, George Merry and the rest – that they were restoring order and conquering mutineers. This was abject nonsense, but it served, and a second slaughter followed, since Flint’s real purpose was to eliminate from the surviving seamen as many as possible of those whom he felt unable to trust in the greater purpose which was to come.