For forty years Elspeth Baillie had not put foot outside the plantation gates; in her mind the rest of the island was still a place devastated by rain and wind and a black, angry sun. For all she knew the ground was still exploding, had never stopped exploding. The western seas still stretching out trying to snatch at her. Now the storm had punctured Roseneythe itself. There was no George this time to carry her to safety; no Henry to place her out of danger on a shelf like a child’s doll.
Elspeth hardly knew Brazos. He was one of Shaw’s and her husband’s workers. She must leave them to deal with him as they saw fit. She was the last to leave the house. “All of you loyal to this estate now has a duty to perform.” She heard, but couldn’t see, Captain Shaw. There were puddles of dim light spattered around – men with lamps, flambeaux staved into the ground. Several circled the centre of the action: naked flames placed around Brazos, where men surrounded him doing something with quiet concentration.
Shaw stepped into view, his face ghostly in the glaur. He walked amongst the shadows, handing out birch-twigs, like palms at Easter. He went on talking – about the need to protect their plantation, their daughters and their way of life. He walked casually back to Brazos and the men who had Elspeth now saw had been pinning his arms and feet to the staves which others pounded into the ground. Shaw was left with the last cane in his hand. He brought it down viciously on the prisoner’s back.
Other men followed his lead and Elspeth flinched at what she saw – the slow rhythmic slash of canes – the earnest, deliberate torturing of a silent man – yet she urged them on; could hear her own voice hissing between taut lips. Beat him. Beat them all. If the tormentors had turned on each other, if the shadows around her had leapt into action, attacked one another, mayhem breaking out, it would have been right and fitting. Elspeth longed for crescendo.
Elspeth watched migrant fieldhands, militia men and ex-slaves beat the factory foreman, sluggishly as if their limbs were being worked by some slow invisible machine. Around her in the dark, staring towards the side of the bluff where the strange event was taking place, stood shadows whose faces she couldn’t make out. No one raised a voice in complaint. Nathanial Wycombe, she thought, was there, and his son Junior. Perhaps the pleasant young James Baxter. There were women too, following their factor’s lead. They stepped up, well-practised in the art of chopping cane, the report of their blows echoing a moment after their strike. Her fellow onlookers stood as if cast in stone, spellbound, arms and hands petrified in the last movement they had been conscious of making.
The thrashing didn’t last long. Shaw held up his hand and the beaters stopped beating. The last to stop was a free black man who had been on the plantation since before Elspeth’s time, a man she’d barely noticed before. A man like Henry, serenely carrying out his duty. Shaw had to remove the rod from his hand. He gave up his weapon indifferently. Shaw leaned over Brazos and spoke softly to him. Then he straightened up and with a sudden yell, louder and more startling than any of the blows, called out, “Bathsheba Miller!”
No one looked up when Bathsheba’s cries came from somewhere behind in the dark. Bathsheba was forced forward, and screamed when she saw Gideón. Shaw said some words which only those closest to the scene could hear. One of the men who held Bathsheba pushed her head up, forcing her to look to her Captain, as he stepped one leg over Brazos’ body so that he was straddling the captive between his feet.
“There is a war raging in the heavens, and we each have our part to play on earth!”
As he spoke he loosened the buckles of his braces, like a man preparing to fight hand to hand with a foe. Perhaps that was what was expected of the two men: bare-fisted, bare-chested combat, a direct settling of their quarrel. Shaw spoke again, pulling the braces from his shoulders. “The Enemy was always there to beguile and sully us. This is a great day! He has shown his face, and now we can demonstrate our contempt for him.”
He sank to his knees, Gideón still unmoving below him. Elspeth could not fathom what Shaw was doing. He looked like a man squatting lazily in the middle of a quiet afternoon. One of his cohorts next to him untied the scarf he wore around his neck, and handed it to his Captain.
“This man here is a slave. Where he comes from the old disciplines still apply. So we castigate him in the old manner.”
Shaw made some motion and heads in front of Elspeth craned to see what was happening, obstructing her view. He gave out a low grunt, then a yelp. Bathsheba screamed; a general gasp went up. When the bodies before her shuffled again, she saw Shaw, still in his shirt but his trews at his ankles, teetering over Gideón and straining. Then the smell of massacuite hit her; the bitter saccharine smell of the dross left after the third pressing; the stench of Shaw refined and distilled to its sickliest. She knew what he had done. She had heard of the punishment before, a common penalty performed by slaver on slave that she had thought was only hearsay. Shaw took his scarf and, like a parent tending a child, cleaned his victim’s face.
“What’s he doing?” she heard Martha Glover, close by, ask.
A young woman’s voice responded: “Tying the gravat roun’ his mout’.”
“Why?”
“So the nigger mus’ swallow the shite.”
Shaw stepped off the wriggling, thrusting Brazos and gestured to the tall ex-slave who had undertaken his beating duties so diligently. As he stepped forward, Bathsheba’s captors pushed her to the ground. One of them held her head while the other forced open her jaw. Shaw himself undid the buckles on the black fieldhand’s braces. It took the briefest of moments for the crowd to understand what was about to happen. One half moved swiftly to prevent the sacrilege, and the other to ensure its success.
The commotion thrilled Elspeth. The looming battle – one group squaring up to another, the insults, the leery dance that precedes a clash – sparked a nostalgia in her. The penny-gaffs and inns of Glasgow and Dundee, the brawling lawlessness – they had always roused her. She used to push against her mother and father as they pulled her away. She listened again now to oaths and curses, watched faces contorted with rage and spite; followed the trajectory of missiles flying over heads, sticks jabbing. The thunder. That deep and dreadful organ-pipe.
As with those dogfights and stouries of old, the posturing resulted in very little. A punch was thrown and parried. Lines of women and men stepped forward, their opposite number fell back. The slurs and affronts grew fiercer as the likelihood of violence receded. It took a goodly time for both factions to tire and wane of their feigning and threatening, disengage one from the other and open up between them an area of neutral ground. Bathsheba’s enemies had lost her to her supporters, and therefore the punishment Shaw had intended remained undelivered. His loyal fieldhand stood, braces loosened, trews hanging loose around his thighs.
Bathsheba stepped past him, and wasn’t obstructed. She moved towards Golondrina Segunda who stood at the head of her supporters. A man stepped out from behind them, walked over to Gideón and untied him. Gideón got up to his feet, but fell immediately back on his knees, vomiting. Elspeth could not make out more of the identities of either group. All she knew was that Roseneythe had been divided roughly in half, Shaw’s group having perhaps the slight majority. He and Golondrina were shouting accusations and blasphemies, the factor’s sharp consonants cutting through the Cuban woman’s deep, dense vowels, each exhorting the other to leave Roseneythe and never return.
“Tek yuh black-hearted idiocy away from us – before I set the Yeomanry on yuh.”
“Ent no law here we breaked. You the criminal, cabrón.”
In the penumbra between the bluff and the figs, where only the edges of light from flames and lamps fell, a third group was forming. People aligning themselves with neither Shaw nor the Negress. Five elderly women – blind Mary, fidgeting and nervous, unsure of what was happening; Martha Turner, the tall woman who had been standing by Elspeth’s side before the feud had broken out; Moira Campbell, staring at her grandson who stood with Shaw’s company; and, at the edge of the little group, Diana Moore. Again Shaw ordered the rebels to pack up and be gone by morning. Moira Riddoch spoke up for them, saying that they were the residents of Roseneythe; that Captain Shaw was no more than a hired hand. He and his cronies were the ones who must be gone before dawn. This exchange seemed to clarify matters for old Mary, who stepped away from Diana and followed the sound of Moira’s voice to stand between her and Bathsheba.
Elspeth heard a scraping noise behind her, and turned to see Albert shuffling out onto the porch. He had propped himself between two chairs, leaning heavily on their backs, dragging their legs as improvised walking sticks. The fighting and the smoke from the torches had smudged everyone out in the yard, but Lord Coak was still spruce from the concert. Shaw broke away from his clan and marched towards the house until he stood next to Elspeth and in front of Coak. He was about to speak when the old man held up his hand to stop him. Coak announced that he had heard what had been happening. He spoke in as loud a voice as he could muster, but his thin words snapped in the open air like falling twigs.
“Captain Shaw is my agent and factor. We all owe to him a great deal. His judgement has been sound all the long years he has devoted to the improvement of this plantation and our lives.”
Those who disobeyed his superintendency, the planter said, could not remain at Roseneythe. Shaw nodded his gratitude, and began to move off in the direction of his house – the last word on the schism having been uttered. The immediate threat to Bathsheba was over. Coak instructed everyone to return to their houses, too, and think deeply on the decision before them. Regardless of what had happened tonight, there was still a home on his estate for those who submitted to the Captain’s authority and his own. There might even be a way for them to parley their differences and come to an accord.
But Bathsheba did not wait for him to finish. She, too, walked up to the porch, then turned her back on Coak to address the company. The sight of such a young woman – elegant gown and pretty shawl ragged and torn by ruffians – presuming to hold forth in front of the entire clan, stopped Shaw in his tracks. Coak attempted to speak over her, but she easily drowned out his voice. “There’s no home for anyone here. And there’s no going home from here. You’ve seen this stinking wretch do his worst. Now it’s over.”
Shaw shouted back that the girl was a whore and half a nigger – she had no right to address anyone. She was the concubine of a Cuban quadroon, the crony of a black witch. He moved towards her, but Bathsheba didn’t flinch as he made to rip away the dress that barely covered the secret of her body. So much younger, defter and quicker than he, she merely stepped aside. Nan, however, afraid he would repeat his attack, ran forwards, shouting.
“Dinna lay one finger on her!”
Nan screamed that Shaw was evil. The de’il himself. Other voices joined her, denouncing the Captain. Shaw yelled back that their mouths were as full of shite as Gideón Brazos’.
“Yuh all have a choice to make. Either follow idiot blacks and half-breeds and traitors, or remain loyal servants of the Crown and Roseneythe.”
Bathsheba spoke again. “There is no Roseneythe. There is no home. Not here. Out there, there’s a whole world.”
“Follow the bitch if you’re dolts. Those that do – leave at first light and follow the road of vagrancy and confusion. The nigger whore and her dupes’ll lead ya’ll into chaos. But if you or your chillen wish to see the fruits of our work, reject this band of mutineers!”
Bathsheba waited until he had finished. When she raised her hand to brush back the hair that fell and curled over her face, the black markings on her skin glowed on her underarm in the tapering torchlight. “Stay here and you’ll never see anywhere you can call home. This plantation will be your prison. Shaw and Coak and those that follow them will work you till you drop, and keep you mistrusting one another. You’ve seen tonight what to expect of our bold captain.”
She turned and held her hand out to Gideón, standing with her band of followers, head hung in shame, shaking with revulsion. “Down that drive and beyond those gates there are people like us. More and more every day.” Gideón, with the help of Golondrina and Nan, came over to her side. She took his head in her hands and kissed his forehead. “Mary. Sarah. Robert. Janet. Bill. Martha. We haven’t any estate, or money, not even plans. But we can find lives for ourselves somewhere beyond those gates.”
One by one her supporters came and stood behind her. Chastity Murray. Erasmus Lloyd. Jack Edmondson. The young Mary Fairweather. Even some of the fieldhands who had not been long at Roseneythe dropped their sticks and lined up behind Bathsheba, Gideón, Nan and Golondrina. Elspeth Johnstone, trembling in fear. Jean MacNeill’s entire family, and Mary Alexander’s; the illegitimate son of Martha Glover. Robert Butcher, Diana’s husband.
Susan Millar walked up to this newly enlarged group, looked directly into Bathsheba’s face, and spat on the ground. She left and stood by Shaw’s side. Margaret Lloyd, stumbling with drink, took her place next to her. The diligent black man who had beaten Gideón went and stood behind them. The Wycombes – father and son – were already in place. Mary Murray shuffled over, hiding herself behind a group of militia men and fieldhands loyal to Shaw. Bessy Riddoch took a hold of her Captain’s arm. Her daughter, Emma, standing by Golondrina, stared at her as if she had seen her mother for the first time. Bess looked to her, appealing, and said, loud enough for Diana Moore and everyone else to hear:
“Some of us want to bide by the side of our stolen chillen.”
Moira Campbell looked to her son who was firmly in place behind Shaw and Susan Millar. She shook her head and took a couple of steps towards her lifelong friends – Nan and blind Mary and Elizabeth – until Susan called out her name, and she looked back at her boy, changed direction and placed herself dutifully between Susan and her son. Thirty-year-old Janet Homes and her husband chose separate paths, she to Bathsheba and he to Shaw. Their daughter, twelve-year-old Peg, followed in her father’s footsteps; the girl’s friends Margaret and Jamie Malcolm, Sally Morton and Abe Berner followed her trail. Two lifelong friends – Rab Elliot and Jurgen Millar gave one another a thunderous look, and went their separate ways. Annie Oyo had remained the entire time behind Shaw; Dainty chose Bathsheba. The whole community thus severed itself.
Apart from Lord Coak – sitting now on his chair on the porch – the only individuals who had not made up their minds were Errol Braithewaite and Errol Sarjant, Elspeth, Diana Moore and her husband Robert Butcher. The two Errols hesitated, but finally took sides with Bathsheba. Robert pulled Diana towards the same group, but she stood rooted to the spot. He stroked her hair to alleviate her ordeal. Diana and Elspeth stood alone in the centre of the yard. Bathsheba held her hand out to Elspeth.
“You were always our mother.”
“She’s mother to us all!” cried out Albert. He turned to her, held his arms out for her to come to him. Shaw spoke out her name. Bathsheba’s arm was still extended. But Elspeth turned to neither group, nor to her husband. She kept her eyes on Diana’s face, and saw that her oldest friend, Roseneythe’s most respected woman, their teacher and scribe, looked lovingly towards Bathsheba’s party. But it was Elspeth she stepped towards, and spoke. “Go to them, Elspeth. If I were free, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
She stepped back again, moved slowly away from Bathsheba towards Shaw’s company. Robert – already deep in the ranks of the breakaway group – howled. “Diana!”
His wife, her eyes filled with tears, couldn’t look in his direction. “Robert. Who was it concocted all those potions? Who administered the Captain’s medicines? Me. Diana Moore. Who wrote up the lists of who should partner who? It was I. I’ve watched children die. I’ve watched my sisters bleed and part with their bairns. When the babbies screamed with the burning of the whitening ointments, I kept on rubbing.”
There was nowhere for her to live any more, she said, outside Roseneythe. Voices were raised in argument: Nan told her all that was forgiven; Golondrina assured her that she had dispensed as much good medicine as bad. Diana just kept shaking her head. “Do you know why I did it? Because I thought it the surest way home. Not an hour has passed that I haven’t thought of the morn I left, my mither and faither too ashamed to bid me fareweel. I’ve known for years that both of them maun be dead, and our hometown gone forever, yet still I slavishly trod that bitter road.” She spoke in the language of her childhood, in the words she’d had before the dominie taught her newer, better ones. She asked her husband to be happy, to forgive her, and she took the final steps to stand by Shaw.
Only Elspeth was left now, her mind numb, shivering as she had not shivered since she had marched through bogs and hail on the way to the cattle trysts of her youth. It was not that she could not make up her mind, but rather that her mind had failed her totally, like an understudy on stage who had forgotten her lines and stood gaping at her audience, unable to move or to think. She heard Lord Coak’s voice:
“The boat has touched this silver strand
Just as the Hunter leaves his stand,
And stands concealed amid the brake,
To view his Lady of the Lake.”
Bathsheba, her hand still held out towards her mistress, interrupted him and continued the poem.
“A chieftain’s daughter seemed the maid;
Her satin snood, her silken plaid,
Her golden brooch, such birth betrayed!”
When Bathsheba stopped, Albert leaned towards Elspeth, so far that it looked as if he might fall from his perch. This house was her stage, he told her in a quiet voice. He was her only true audience. Out there was nothing but poverty. Her father’s words might still come true – she could yet be reduced to a whore. Worse, an ancient whore. In this house she would always be beautiful. Always feted, her name remembered for generations.
At the back of her mind she knew that a crucial, simple action was required of her. A crossing of the stage at a climactic moment; a word, a gesture, to gratify an audience. Choose Capulet or Montague; Life or Death. The arguments of the drama had all now been made – follow the mutineers, or keep faith with the king and the prince. But she was unsure of the part she was playing. She felt like the chorus, the narrator of an epilogue, not the heroine.
The two flanks parted without her having made a move. She watched them move off in different directions. Shaw, his hand gentle on the small of her back, guided her the few paces towards her husband. Albert put his trembling hand on her shoulder. Thus escorted on either side, she was led towards the door, footsteps fading behind her.
Our revels now are ended. The words came to her, out of the past. These our actors, as I had foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air. In the light of the hallway she moved towards the staircase, at the top of which she thought she saw a figure; a dark silhouette, beckoning her. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the light, to see the spectre clearly: handsome young George Lisle, untouched by age and toils, his wound miraculously healed, waiting for her, welcoming her home.