They reached Antigua four days later, dropping anchor in the harbour of St John’s on the north west coast. Here they learned the rumours of war rife on the Guinea coast were unfounded. They had been based on the assumption that the attack by a British squadron under Vice-Admiral Edward Boscawen on some French men-of-war on the Grand Banks, resulting in the capture of the Lys, the Dauphin Royal and three military transports, would lead to a declaration of war from Paris. Fog had dispersed the French fleet, and Boscawen’s attack, designed to prevent a large reinforcement of troops under the escort of Le Comte de la Motte reaching Canada, prevented neither the new Governor of Canada, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, nor the army commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, from reaching their destination.
Nevertheless, hostilities between the two colonising powers in North America, France in Canada and Britain in the Thirteen American Colonies along the Atlantic coast to the south, had been smouldering along the wild frontiers for some time. The first clash had come at Great Meadows on the Ohio, when a mixed force of colonial troops and Indians under a provincial major named George Washington, had skirmished with French forces. But the previous summer the British had suffered disaster and humiliation when a British column under General Braddock was ambushed on the forested banks of the the Monongahela. While hostilities had broken out in the backwoods, Boscawen’s provocative attack on the French men-of-war failed in its objective of forcing the hand of King Louis XV into an outright declaration of war. Instead, so Makepeace and Kite now learned, a diplomatic tangle among the royal courts of Europe was embroiling the whole continent in opposing armed camps. Full-blown hostilities, it was sanguinely asserted, would come sooner or later.
But in the West Indies the remorseless workings of commerce ground on, untroubled by such considerations. Makepeace landed his slaves and they were sold at an average of nine pounds sterling, a price which furnished the Enterprize’s commander and his reduced company with a handsome profit. As for the miserable and fearful blacks, it was only now that their future became clear. Those who had not been sea-sick during the middle-passage now found the strange island swayed under their fettered feet and that the irons round their ankles were not to be removed. Instead they were cruelly branded by their new owners and vanished into the country, or were trans-shipped to other islands in the West Indies. Over a hundred were purchased by a merchant from Havana, in Cuba. Makepeace was content, his under-manned brig was incapable of touting her cargo beyond Antigua. He was keen to refit her, recruit more hands to man her for the homeward passage from among the human flotsam that accumulated on the waterfront of St John’s, and load a cargo for Liverpool before war filled the chops of the Channel with French privateers.
In the hurly-burly of discharging the slaves, who left in a mournful, iron-bound column for the mastaba in the market, to be pulled and prodded by the plantation owners prior to purchase, Kite’s circumstances underwent a transformation. Nor was he insensible that his own fate was in a marked contrast to that of the majority of the slaves, for he had acquired slaves of his own. When the Enterprize had arrived at St John’s, Kite had made clear to Makepeace his intention of securing the person of Puella and the captain had cynically charged Kite the exorbitant price of fifteen pounds for the privilege. On the morning that the slaves were roused for transfer to the slave market, she abandoned his cabin and he had found her cowering fearfully, her arm round a boy whose features, Kite realised, suggested he was a relative of Puella’s. Kite recognised him as the victim of sodomy he had seen being abused at the beginning of the passage. Sighing he had nodded, ordering Kerr to release the boy’s leg irons and giving him into Puella’s charge while he sought the captain.
‘I am busy, Mr Kite,’ Makepeace said, waving him aside as he shuffled papers in his cabin. ‘You have your black whore, now indulge me and leave, I have to visit the agent and secure my homeward cargo…’
‘Forgive me, Captain Makepeace, but I am determined to leave the Enterprize, sir. I doubt you will have need of a surgeon on the homeward voyage.’
‘But I need officers. You may have Molloy’s berth, Mr Kite.’
‘I do not wish it, sir. Also, I wish to purchase a boy. He is, I think Puella’s brother or, perhaps cousin or nephew.’
Makepeace looked up. ‘You are a bigger fool than I conceived possible.’ He lay the paper he had been reading from on the table and confronted Kite, his expression hard and uncompromising. ‘You may go to the devil, Kite. You will tire of the wench and the boy will only prove mischievous unless you thrash him. Sell them…’
‘No sir, that I cannot do. I intend giving them their freedom.’
‘What, so that they can starve of prostitute themselves on the waterfront?’ Makepeace shook his head at Kite’s lack of worldliness.
‘No, so that they can live under my protection.’
Makepeace shook his head. ‘I will not sell you the boy. I shall save you from your own folly.’
‘I am entitled to two slaves,’ Kite persisted. ‘I am resolved and shall buy him in the market. Surely you would rather profit directly without the auctioneer’s fee.’
Makepeace shook his head and regarded Kite with sudden interest. The young man who had sewn up a harlot’s arse in Liverpool had become a strong character, a man it seemed impossible to reason with, who knew his own mind. And it was odd, Makepeace thought, that the affair with the black wench had somehow strengthened this impression; quite the reverse from his intention when he had dangled her enticingly in front of Kite.
‘You are incorrigible…’ Makepeace’s handsome face took on a harsh expression. ‘Mr Kite, I had no idea, beyond serving my own ends, that taking you on board my ship would be the cause of her being saved from a plague of the yellow-jack but such, I must confess, to have been the case. I, no, the whole surviving ship’s company are indebted to you. But I must warn you that within every man lie the seeds of his own destruction. You remarked my own distemper; yours is a foolish and wanton compassion. Compassion is not a vice found in the British sea-services, thank God. We match our wits against a pitiless sea, against a pitiless climate and pitiless disease in a trade that better acquits itself by similarly being pitiless.’
‘That is why I cannot remain with you, Captain Makepeace.’
A silence fell between the two men, broken by Makepeace who expelled air through pursed lips and shook his head. ‘You are beyond me, Kite, beyond me. Whatever brought you aboard the Enterprize in Liverpool, I cannot think. But you may find employment here, in Antigua. Do you wish me to speak to Mr Mulgrave, our agent? He is a well known West India merchant with a large establishment here.’
‘I should be obliged and most grateful,’ Kite paused a moment, then said, ‘I, er, I mean you will make it clear to Mr Mulgrave that I have, er, a household.’
Makepeace, who had resumed the perusal of his papers, looked up again, raising his eyebrows. ‘A household? My word, Kite, you have more than that, you have delusions of grandeur!’ Makepeace laughed and nodded, smiling. ‘Yes, I shall speak to Mulgrave. I happen to know he is short of a clerk.’
‘That is kind of you, sir.’
‘We shall truly be quits then.’
‘Truly, sir.’
Makepeace suddenly held out his hand. ‘I cannot think that you were preserved from the yellow-jack to waste your life as a counting-house clerk, but if that is what you want… You may have the boy for the price of a man, nine pounds…’
‘I agree.’
‘In that case you shame me. You may have him for seven…’
‘I shall pay you nine pounds, Captain Makepeace, and count myself the luckier man.’
Makepeace pulled a face. ‘By Jupiter, Kite, you have the tongue of a preacher. In any case, you will have sufficient money from this voyage to subsist for a while on your own resources.’ Makepeace paused, then added ‘if you keep that jade poorly shod and on short commons.’
Kite left Makepeace, uncertain of his future. The immediate responsibility of Puella and the boy had diverted his mind from the problems of his past and their long shadow on the rest of his life. The legacy of his voyage on the Enterprize and his brush with death and disease was to mark him for life, but when he left the Guineaman in Antigua, he did so with a reputation as an extraordinary and honest, if eccentric young man.
William Kite was fortunate in finding himself employed by Joseph Mulgrave, then the leading and most influential merchant in Antigua. Mulgrave was a tall, cadaverous man whose skin had not been burned by the tropical sun, despite thirty years in the West Indies. Mulgrave avoided exposure during daylight whenever possible, but sat at his desk in a black suit more suited to the smoke of London, venturing out only after dark when his tall figure could be seen walking through the town, looking neither to right nor left, and acknowledging no-one. An unconvivial and, insofar as respectable white society was concerned, solitary bachelor, Mulgrave’s sole and absorbing passion was commerce and the amassing of capital. Aloof, dispassionate and apparently devoid of any human emotion, he was spoken of in reverential tones in the ports of the Antilles; the extent of his wealth was unknown, but rumoured to be enormous. His more accountable reputation derived from his scrupulous honesty in all his business transactions.
On their first encounter, Kite thought he had been delivered into the presence of a forbidding man of rigid views and severe habits, who would disapprove of Puella and the boy. But Mulgrave, having coldly addressed a few questions to Kite and having clearly gained from Makepeace an insight into the young man’s character, proceeded to surprise him.
‘You have two young blacks under your protection, I understand, Mr Kite.’ Mulgrave asked with dispassionate candour in a deep bass. The voice was surprising for one so slender, but was, Kite was to learn in due time, the most superficial of the surprises Mr Mulgrave would spring upon him.
‘I do, sir.’
‘Do you intend to live in some intimacy with the young woman?’
‘If that would not offend you, sir,’ Kite said cautiously, embarrassed and flushing.
The ghost of a smile flickered momentarily across Mulgrave’s face and Kite saw the horizontal cicatrix of a scar that ran from the left cheekbone to the ear, the lobe of which was nicked. It added to the sinister image Makepeace presented as he formed his reply. ‘Not at all, but it would be best if you were to dwell under my own roof. I have adequate accommodation and we can better teach the two of them a smattering of English sufficient for your wants.’
‘That is most thoughtful of you, sir.’ Kite was only half relieved; living under the same roof as Mr Mulgrave seemed to possess little attraction.
‘Do you realise that consorting with a black, damns you in the eyes of many of your fellow countrymen in Antigua? The fact that they fornicate and miscegenate themselves, is a measure of their hypocrisy, but that does not alter the way they will regard an open liaison such as you have adopted. Your youth and opinions are contrary to what is regarded here as acceptable; recent arrivals may be treated like lepers, so you will not find yourself in great demand at Government House, or elsewhere, for that matter.’
‘I do not think that will greatly trouble me, sir.’
‘Well, we shall see about that in due course. But if you intend to keep her, you will burn your boats in respect of settling here. Do you understand?’ Kite nodded; the prospect of surrendering Puella at this tremulously uncertain moment in his life filled him with horror.
‘Now,’ went on Mulgrave, ‘pray tell me the young woman’s name.’
‘I have called her Puella, sir.’
Mulgrave raised an eyebrow. ‘And the boy?’
‘I have not named him.’
‘Mmm. I like the Latin tag… Puella has a better sound to it than Puer, but we should keep the alliteration; let us call the lad Pompey.’ Again the faint trace of smile flitted across Mulgrave’s face. ‘They will both wear their leg irons until they have learned sufficient English to understand their circumstances. They may find that rather hard to bear, but it is for their own good. If they run away now and are caught out in the wild country near any of the plantations, they are like to be whipped, shot or savaged by dogs long before establishing their identity.’
‘I see, sir.’
‘You do not see, Mr Kite,’ Mulgrave said with cold finality, ‘but you will, in due course. Sometimes one must be cruel to be kind. St John’s has many free men and women of colour, it will be difficult for Puella and Pompey, but they will come to understand in time. When they speak enough English, we may strike off their fetters. Perhaps by then you will be settled in your own establishment. While you are under my roof, Mr Kite, I regret to inform you that you will find yourself keeping your own company, I am not a sociable man and I eat alone. You may chose to do the same or to teach Puella her table manners, but that is your affair. I hope you read; I have a fair library and you are welcome to make use of it. Now, to business. My senior clerk is a Mr Wentworth and his assistant has lately embarked aboard the King George, packet, intending to return to England, hence the vacant post which is now, providentially, yours. In addition to your lodging, I can defray your living expenses and provide you with a small competence. In due course other opportunities may present themselves, but that will largely depend upon your own energy.’ Mulgrave’s eyes remained fixed on Kite, who held their gaze steadily. ‘Now, Mr Kite, in return I require absolute loyalty, perfect probity and twelve hours a day of your attention. May I assume you still wish to take up my offer?’
‘You may, sir.’
And so Kite settled into the large rambling house that Jospeh Mulgrave had built amid a tangle of dense thorn scrub on a hillside overlooking St John’s, where Puella and Pompey began to learn English as they worked under the tutelage of Mulgrave’s formidable housekeeper, a large, well-formed and handsome mulattess called Mistress Dorothea. Ignorant of the usual formalities of West Indian colonial society, yet seduced by its colourful manifestations on the waterfront that stretched along the quayside immediately outside the doors of Mulgrave’s counting house, Kite fell easily into a routine. For the first time since he had stumbled into the Hebblewhite’s barn, he was filled with the almost forgotten feeling of contentment. Now something like a future lay before him.
Mr Wentworth was a red-faced, perspiring, over-weight and untidily dressed man whose appearance belied a keen intelligence and a considerable energy. Somewhat foppish in appearance and always a martyr to fashion in the tropical heat, Wentworth bore down upon the newcomer like a ship in full sail. An incorrigible talker, Kite soon learned that Wentworth possessed a driving ambition to rise socially. His origins were humble, for his father had been an indentured white, shipped out from England as a criminal and set to work on the plantations. His mother’s origins were never referred to, so Kite assumed she had most probably been a prostitute, but the child had been seen by Mulgrave playing in the streets, amid the children of free blacks, mulattoes and quadroons. Mulgrave was then a young man, newly arrived in Antigua with a livid scar on his cheek and a reputation which was soon confirmed, as a crack shot with a pistol, suggesting a dark and, for the ladies of the island at least, a darkly romantic past. Taking the boy up, Mulgrave made the lad his servant. It was not long before Mulgrave had bought a share in an established business and was settled in St John’s. By this time he had recognised the shrewd intelligence in his youthful valet.
‘One morning, to my complete astonishment,’ Wentworth explained in a curious accent, ‘Mr Mulgrave said that I was to accompany him and he took me to a tailor then resident in St John’s and out-fitted me with a gentleman’s habiliments. I already knew how to read and write and I was placed directly in the counting house. Of course,’ Wentworth said with a candid lack of modesty that Kite learned was a perverse copy of his benefactor’s absolute honesty, ‘it was not long before it was clear that I was capable of more than merely making ledger entries…’
The disparagement of Kite’s own present task was not, Kite felt, meant as an insult. There was a degree of affectation in Wentworth that caused unintentional irony and it took Kite sometime to realise that Wentworth’s diction arose from his desire to copy Mulgrave’s cool accent in what he assumed was the enunciation of the English aristocracy. Wentworth was aware that, however he got his surname, it was that of one of England’s grand families; this set Wentworth’s mind on ascending the social ladder. One day, he made it quite plain, when he had made his own or inherited Mulgrave’s fortune, he would go to England and make his debut in what he referred to as ‘polite society’. In the mean time, the lesser ladder of Antigua’s colonial white establishment provided Mr Wentworth with a sufficient social challenge.
In the first few days of their acquaintance, Kite was bombarded with information about men and women of every station in the island’s hierarchy. From the Governor and his staff, by way of army officers, plantations owners, merchants, advocates, ship-masters, slave traders and overseers, Wentworth delivered himself of a discourse on the subtle social gradations, stressing of course, the connections, alliances, divisions and pretensions among the white community. He grew salacious when referring to these men’s wives, indicating the uses of making love to Mrs This, or Mrs That; that the Misses The Other were marriageable for their money, though not their looks, and that Kite, if he knew what was good for him, would make no moves to advancement without first consulting him.
‘If you do that, Kite, you will not regret it.’ Wentworth concluded his introductory remarks with a smile that Kite found amusing. ‘Ah,’ he said seriously, ‘but I forgot, you co-habit openly…’
Despite the man’s obsession, Kite did not dislike him. Had he personally entertained any desire for integration with Antiguan life, he would have found Wentworth’s patronising a mild irritant; as it was he merely recognised that Wentworth was warning the new clerk. Kite should not presume to tread on the preserves that Wentworth regarded as his own province.
‘I understand,’ Wentworth said with a hint of disdain, ‘that you do not intend renouncing your blackamoor.’
‘No, I do not.’
‘I shall not hold that against you, Kite. Mr Mulgrave himself sets us an example not to be dismissed as mere licentiousness for indeed, my word, it is not in his case. For licentiousness you must look at the concubinage of Mr Lomax of the Crown Plantation! My word, sir, yes. And I feel so sorry for his wife who is so kind a creature, or of George Radley from Willoughby… My word, they are hedonists alongside whom Mr Mulgrave is a perfect and most wonderful gentleman…’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ Kite replied drily.
Setting aside this torrent of obsessive social pretension, Wentworth displayed a masterly grasp of the commercial activity not merely on the island of Antigua, but of the region, explaining the inter-relationship between the adjacent French possession Guadeloupe and Antigua; of the trade in slaves with Cuba; of the export of muscovado and sugar, of rum and molasses to Liverpool, London and Bristol, and of the importance of the trans-shipment of commodities to and from the Thirteen Colonies of North America. Under this general picture of a vigorous trade, Wentworth spoke of the necessary currency transactions, of the growing importance of banking and credit, supplying asides at every opportunity to demonstrate a coup here, a timely loan there, the swift taking up of a lading and the faster settlement of an advantageous freight-rate made by the House of Mulgrave. Many, though not all Wentworth admitted, were entirely due to his own acumen. He stressed that of Mulgrave in the matter of investment, of the ships in which Mulgrave had a part, but never a whole interest. ‘Only a fool owns sixty-four sixty-fourths in a ship, Kite, only a fool… Oh dear, yes…’ Wentworth chuckled, emphasising this recondite wisdom.
He, like the obviously much admired Mulgrave, applied only three principles to commerce; the first was to keep one’s word, the second was to be inquisitive and constantly seek out new opportunities, the third was never to place too many eggs in one basket.
It took three months, much of which was spent tediously at his ledgers, for Kite to begin to truly comprehend the complexities of his new employment. He wrote and copied out letters, pasting them in the company’s guard books, he learned to draft bills of lading, becoming familiar with phrases such as Bound by God’s Grace, and Delivered in the like Good Order and Well Conditioned at the Aforesaid Port, the Danger of the Seas and Mortality only Excepted… That by such documentation, thousands of Africans were sent into hard labour in the sugarcane fields of the Indies and the plantations of the Carolinas, faded from his perception as the middle passage of the Enterprize seemed more and more like a bad dream.
Wentworth patronised him, especially once he learned that Kite was from hum-drum origins. It pleased Wentworth that Kite was not a name to set aside that of Wentworth or Mulgrave. But Kite found this tolerable. After the long and terrible weeks aboard the Enterprize, the steady routine of his life in the House of Mulgrave brought a great peace to him.
He no longer felt he was escaping, only that the dimming past was forgiven, if not forgotten. He was, of course, seduced by Puella; their relationship grew wonderfully and their self-engrossment grew daily as Puella’s English improved. Mistress Dorothea proved a kind and tolerant teacher and Kite learnt that although an Antiguan born woman, her situation was otherwise not dissimilar to Puella’s. Like Wentworth, Dorothea had been picked up off the street and openly made Mulgrave’s mistress. Shunned by the island’s white society for this unholy admission of blatant concubinage, the naturally solitary Mulgrave had simply turned his considerable abilities to the despised opportunities offered by trade. In this he had become an institution and never, despite the disdain of formal convention, lost his romantic aura as far as the white ladies of the island were concerned. The men, many of whom over-populated their estates with half-caste bastards, joked about Mulgrave’s failure to beget ‘pickaninnies’ on his black mistress. The failure seemed to confirm the inadequacies of those who trafficked in mere ‘goods’, though there was not a man among them who would not have leapt eagerly into the beautiful Dorothea’s bed had the opportunity offered. Their thin lipped white-skinned wives wilting in the heat or suffering vapid attacks in the heavy rains, envied Dorothea’s indisputable beauty, marvelling at the uprightness of her carriage and the voluptuousness of her figure.
By the time Kite had familiarised himself with his new tasks, Puella had mastered sufficient English to exchange more than a minor daily dialogue with him. In another manifestation of his changing luck, Kite learned that Dorothea’s mother had belonged to the same tribe as Puella. It took some days before Dorothea had so far recalled the tongue of her childhood that the two could gossip freely, but thereafter her coaching of Puella was swift and sure, for the common origin quickly built a bond between the two women. For all his courtesy towards her, Dorothea never felt herself even a common law wife to the austere and remote Mulgrave. He was a man for whom intimacy was something permissible only in his bedroom. Otherwise he stood quite alone in the world and although Dorothea knew Mulgrave better than any other person living for a truly kind and shy man, a man who had seen her cared for and secure long before he had taken her to bed, she mourned her lack of children. That, she thought in contrast to the white planters, was a measure of his power. Withholding the potence of his copious seed, convinced her that she was loved by a white spirit too powerful to conceive like a simple man. By such reasoning Dorothea could explain his fabulous wealth and the respect Mulgrave commanded, and from it too, she drew the secret empowerment of herself, for hers was, she knew, a position much envied, especially by the white women.
Though Puella and her young cousin could not compensate her for her lack of children, Dorothea was overjoyed to have them in Mulgrave’s huge and gloomy house. She liked Kite too, about whom she knew a great deal, thanks to Puella’s confidences. Kite was a handsome contrast to the sweating Wentworth who always treated Dorothea with a confused mixture of fascination and terror.
The swiftly burgeoning friendship between the two women soon led to Puella being freed from her odious leg-irons. Pompey was similarly freed, but his was a less happy situation. Whether the abuse to which he had been subjected aboard the Enterprize, or earlier in the baracoons on the banks of the Sherbro, Pompey proved a simple soul. He was destined to remain no more than a barefoot house-boy for the rest of his life, soon passing from Kite’s ownership to that of Wentworth.
Kite sold him for a nominal guinea to his new acquaintance and Wentworth was pleased with the bargain. It was not long before Pompey appeared in St John’s in a livery devised, Wentworth was fond of saying, by Mrs Robertson, wife to one of the garrison’s officers, whom he described as ‘a particular frined’. Dressed thus, Pompey was seen everywhere his master went, holding Wentworth’s hat and cane until he had drunk his dish of chocolate with his hostess. Mulgrave’s misanthropy encouraged Wentworth to undertake all business errands between the House of Mulgrave and its clientele, errands which Wentworth, with his talent for flattery and admiration usually succeeded in turning to some form of personal advantage. Mulgrave did not object to this and Wentworth, having learnt much of his demeanour from his benefactor, never over-stepped the limits of propriety. But his own natural sociability, a not unaffected subservience and the adroitness of his mind when considering matters of trade, made him generally welcome, for Wentworth had learned the benefits of giving disinterested advice. When this invariably proved beneficial, his stock rose and he acted as a magnet for business, a fact which Mulgrave was not insensible of.
Though Kite’s work was dull, his presence and competence freed Wentworth to pursue a greater volume of business. One afternoon, after Kite had laboured at his desk for a period of some six months and the year drew to its close, when, incongruously, the community of St John’s prepared to celebrate Christmas in insufferable heat, Kite was summoned by Mulgrave.
He was reading newspapers brought that day in the newly arrived packet and he set the broadsheet down with a rustle, to regard Kite above clasped hands. Upon these he rested his chin. It was a sign, Kite had learned, that Mulgrave was in an unbending mood. ‘I wish you to dine with me this evening, Mr Kite. An hour after sunset, shall we say?’
‘As you wish, sir.’ Kite gave a half bow and withdrew. Shortly afterwards Wentworth returned from his daily visit to the harbour and the ships on whose behalf Mulgrave and Company acted or in which they had an interest. He too was swiftly summoned and similarly invited.
‘I am to dine with Mr Mulgrave this evening,’ Wentworth said when he returned from Mulgrave’s private office, a satisfied smile on his face.
‘So am I,’ Kite countered, amused that the news put Wentworth’s nose out of joint.
‘That’s odd…’ Wentworth frowned and added, ‘I’ve only ever known him ask us to dine before on one occasion.’ Wentworth nodded. ‘Oh yes, it was the night he told Cornford, your predecessor, that he had been informed that Cornford had been left three thousand pounds a year and that in view of this fact it would be in neither Cornford’s nor Mulgrave and Company’s interest that he should remain in the company’s employment.’
‘I see. Then Mulgrave knew before the beneficiary,’ remarked Kite.
‘Well, that’s his way,’ Wentworth said as if it were sufficient explanation for Mulgrave’s apparent prescience. Kite saw that the single precedent was working on Wentworth’s innate anxiety.
‘Well, Mr Wentworth,’ Kite said drily, preserving the social distinction Wentworth insisted on in the counting house, ‘I am certain I am not to be told I have come into three thousand a year…’
‘Nor me, damn it…’
‘Perhaps our master is about to reveal the fact that he knows you to already have that sum on your own account,’ Kite teased.
‘Would that it was true…’ Wentworth said awkwardly.
Kite laughed. ‘You are colouring up, sir, I have heard it to be true…’
‘Who told you?’ Wentworth snapped, taking the bait.
‘Miss Cunningham…’
‘You do not know Miss Cunningham, Kite… do you?’
Kite shook his head. ‘No, sir, I do not…’
‘Then you tease me…?’
‘I fear I do. Will you fight me?’ Kite grinned, slipping off his stool and putting up his fists. ‘Come fight me Mr Wentworth, ‘tis damned tedious here today.’
Wentworth waved Kite aside. ‘Get on with your work, Kite, making money is never tedious if you engage your whole intelligence upon it, to be sure.’
Kite sighed. ‘That is true, Mr Wentworth.’
‘I shall see you at dinner, Kite.’
On reaching the house he repaired at once to the wing generously set aside for his accommodation. Apprised of his arrival, Puella quickly appeared. She wore a simple gown made of scarlet cotton, such as might have been worn by the wife of a comfortable shop-keeper in Cockermouth. She ran to him, kissed him and, as he sank into a chair, knelt and removed his shoes.
‘Puella, you are a wonder.’
‘You like some lemonade?’
He nodded and she ran off, to return a few moments later with a glass of the cordial. He took it, leaned back and she kneeled again at his feet. Absently he tousled her hair as he drained the glass, then he smacked his lips and she took the glass from his hand and set it upon an adjacent table before sitting on his lap. After kissing, he said, ‘Puella, I shall not be dining with you tonight.’
‘Oh, Kite, I cannot dine with not you.’
‘Without…’ Kite corrected.
‘Without you. What you eat tonight?’
Kite shrugged. ‘I don’t know what I shall eat, Puella, but I know with whom I shall eat whatever I do eat.’
She tapped the end of his nose which she regarded as a curiously aberrant and pert a proboscis. It was her way of responding when he teased her. ‘Kite, you horrible!’
Kite smiled and said seriously, ‘I am dining with Mr Mulgrave and, Puella, I think he has something important to say to me, and to Mr Wentworth.’ He frowned. ‘Has Dorothea said anything about him being unwell? I mean sick?’ he added hurriedly.
Puella shook her head and lowered her eyes. ‘No, Kite. Dorothea told me Mr Mulgrave was still good for her,’ and she whipped up the hem of her skirt and rubbed herself with a giggle.
Kite frowned. ‘Puella, you must not do that. It is not what a lady would do…’
Puella slipped from his lap and stood in front of him, her hands on her hips. ‘Puella is not a lady; Puella is a black whore…’
Kite was on his feet in an instant, one arm round her waist, the other across her mouth. He was horrified. ‘Puella! You are not to speak those words! Never!’
Puella smiled triumphantly up at him. ‘Come then, Kite, you be good for Puella…’
An hour later Kite walked the length of the verandah, his footfalls creaking the timbers, the warm night air filled with the loud chirrup of a myriad of cicadas. He found Mulgrave sitting alone in a cane chair, sipping lemonade.
‘Sit down, Mr Kite.’ A black servant emerged from the shadows and set down a glass alongside Kite as he lowered himself into one of Mulgrave’s extraordinary whicker chaise-longues. They had hardly wished each other good health, when Wentworth arrived, puffing dangerously and clearly discomfitted to find his junior already ensconced with their host.
Wentworth lived above the counting house and found Kite’s residence under Mulgrave’s private roof a touch irksome. He had, Kite thought, expected some alteration in his circumstances when he acquired a black servant in the person of Pompey, and his anxiety that Kite would replace himself in Mulgrave’s plans, seemed to have revived in recent weeks.
Perhaps Wentworth knew something of what was to transpire that evening. After a few moments conversation about the affairs of the day, they went in to eat. The meal was sparse, the wine good but limited and the conversation non-existent. Mulgrave seemed unaffected, but both Wentworth and Kite felt the suspense intolerable. As the servants drew the cloth and Mulgrave selected a cigar from a humidor, he indicated they might join him in a smoke or help themselves from a decanter of rum. Wentworth accepted both, Kite neither. Mulgrave raised his eyebrow and waved the servants out. Having drawn upon his cigar and sent a feather of blue smoke across the table so that the candle flames flickered, he leaned forward on his elbows. Sitting on his left, Kite stared at the way the candlelight etched Mulgrave’s features. The man was handsome, in a long-faced and lugubrious fashion, his grey hair swept back over his head into a tight queue at the nape of his neck where it was severely clubbed in a ribbon as black at the suit he habitually wore.
The jagged furrow of the scar which seamed his face supported the wide-spread rumour that Mulgrave had fought a duel. His opponent’s ball had disfigured Mulgrave’s face, his own, it was said, had found a more effective target.
‘Well gentlemen,’ Mulgrave said in his low bass voice, as he secured the undivided attention of his young colleagues, ‘you will be wondering at the meaning of all this joyless conviviality.’ He looked at the two young men and Kite thought he saw in the dark eyes a sardonic sparkle. ‘From time to time in a man’s life, there come moments when matters shift their ground. One such moment has come to me and therefore to you also.’ He turned to Wentworth with his slight smile. ‘You Wentworth, I have always regarded as a protégé. It is true that you are a somewhat out-of-elbows fellow, always running and puffing, but you have been a faithful servant and, while I know that from time to time you have accumulated on your own account, you have never cheated me…’
Kite watched Wentworth suffer under the ruthless assessment that was, it was obvious, all too true. It made Wentworth’s earlier protestations over his acquisition of capital rather amusing. At least, Kite reflected, in his own case he had neither enjoyed so long an acquaintance with Mr Mulgrave, nor had he had anything more than a modestly gainful employment from him.
‘So, Wentworth, it is my intention to pass the whole of my business over to you once I have secured such capital as I personally require…’
Wentworth’s eyes opened wide and he half-gasped, then his expression collapsed, like a man about to burst into guffaws of mirth, or howl at terrible news. With a kind of strangled cry, Wentworth buried his head in his hands, and his shoulders shook so that he seemed shaken either by great mirth, or great grief. Mulgrave merely glanced at his protégé and went on steadily, like a ship dashing aside a wave, Kite thought irrelevantly.
‘One does not live forever, and I have an account elsewhere that I wish soon to settle in a private manner.’ Those few words, it was clear to Kite, were all they were ever either going to have by way of explanation, but this thought had scarcely struck Kite, than Mulgrave was speaking of him.
‘As for you Kite, Captain Makepeace said of you that you were an unusual young man, gifted as a surgeon and capable, he thought, of many things. Yet you remain a dilemma. You have made no effort to even promulgate the fact that you were a surgeon. I find that strange, unless you have reasons for concealing the fact…’
Kite leaned forward to speak, but Mulgrave simply raised a hand and he remained silent.
‘Whatever the reason for you singular conduct in this matter, I have observed you to be the man of principle that Makepeace said you were. I have known Captain Makepeace a long time. Although given to bouts of drunkenness, in which he is in no wise unique, he is an able sea-officer and was, when in command of a letter-of-marque in the last war, a successful privateer-commander. As a slaver he is astute, taking good care of his charges and is a man who makes his own luck. I therefore value his opinion and have decided not wait unduly long before prosecuting my own private affairs in order to verify his judgement. In short, Mr Kite, beyond what you have already shown of yourself, I am taking you on trust.’
Kite murmured his thanks, though he was apprehensive now, certain that whatever Mulgrave was about to propose, would disturb the tranquillity of his present life.
‘In six months or so, I intend to return to England. War seems certain and my departure would be sooner, but matters cannot simply be dropped like a stone. In the mean time, having seen you Wentworth, in possession of my affairs here, both as my successor and my agent, it is my intention to take passage for Carolina and afterwards Philadelphia and New York. Since I shall personally have relinquished my interest in all my ships and vessels in the Antilles in your favour Wentworth, and I am moreover prejudiced against placing my person at risk at so uncertain a time, I am unwilling to sail in any vessel other than one in which I have a perfect confidence.’ Mulgrave turned to Kite. ‘I am therefore resolved to purchase an armed schooner in your name Mr Kite, and placing the vessel at least under your management if you do not feel competent to take the command, to request that you have her ready for sea by the end of January. Once purchased she will become not merely your property, but your domicile. Other details we will discuss in the coming days and I shall devote sufficient time to concert matters with each of you.’ Mulgrave paused, allowing his words to sink in. Wentworth, overjoyed at his new-found wealth and already contemplating the means by which he could announce it to Antigua in general and Miss Cunningham in particular, had emerged from behind his hands, a look of stupefaction on his broad face that belied the industry of his mind.
Kite’s shift in fortunes were less spectacular, though more profound. That the schooner would become his own was clear and, Kite divined, somehow congruous with the way in which Mulgrave conducted his affairs. Like Dorothea, Kite found himself bound to Mulgrave in a fashion akin in some small way, to that of moral servitude. Of course, Kite could destroy that trust at his own whim, perhaps with little economic effect, but he half-guessed that in this way Mulgrave subtly secured the bonds that bound to him those people he selected as beneficiaries.
When Kite returned to Puella that night, he was both elated and disturbed by the news that Mulgrave had given him. He had known that his idyllic existence would not go on for ever, but he fretted over Puella’s fate, as he fretted over that of his father and sister in the distant lakes and fells of Cumbria. He was not a natural nomad, not drawn to the existence that Makepeace and others accepted as a means to a distant and uncertain end. Moreover, fate was moving him again, and this movement was inexorably towards England, where he was still regarded as a murderer.
Puella was fast asleep, replete from their earlier love-making, but Kite was too stimulated by the events of the evening to lie quietly beside her. He retired to the adjacent room and, finding his long neglected journal, he lit a candle, and found pen and ink. Opening the book he regarded the single sheet of paper that lay inside. It was a half-completed letter to his sister, Helen, and was dated some weeks earlier.
As for me, I am Well, he read, as I Hope you and Father both are. You will Learn from this that I am in the West Indies, where Talk of War with all its Uncertainties, Prompts me to Write. I should like you to Write to me at the Address of Mulgrave & Co, St John’s, Antigua, telling me the State of your Health, together with that of our Father’s. I will…
But he had never finished the unsatisfactory letter, unsure what to say, or whether the recipient would welcome it. With a sigh, he now lifted it up and held it in the candle-flame. The paper curled then flared up, finally falling as black ash. Blowing the charred remnant onto the floor he took up his pen, dipped it in the ink-well and held it poised over his journal.
‘Kite…’ Puella stood in the doorway. She was naked and the candle-light fell upon the familiar curves of her beautiful brown body.
‘I think I soon have pickaninny.’