types, speaking in a general kind of way. First, there’s your Eboes. They come mostly from Benin, that’s the underbelly part of Guinea. They’re the least useful, in my opinion, though they fetch them over in droves. A very timid type, and rather prone to killing themselves of despair, I’m sorry to say. You’ll see a lot of them in the scramble tomorrow, I don’t doubt. Then there’s your Pawpaws and your Nagoes, from a bit further north. Now these are very excellent Negroes if they’ll live, very docile and well-disposed creatures, and never the least trouble, but they die off easy from a lack of character – am I going too fast, sir?’ He asked this of James, who had produced a pocket book and stub of blacklead pencil and was taking rapid notes. James waved him on. ‘The third type is your Mandingo. He’s a clever fellow, too clever in fact, he can learn to read and write and do his sums very quick, but he’s lazy, and much given to theft. And then,’ said the fat planter grandly, as if announcing a prize bull, ‘there’s your Coromantee, from the Gold Coast. He’s the cream of Africans, stands head and shoulders above the rest. Firm of body, firm of mind, brave, strong, extraordinary powerful worker in the field – but proud too, stubborn, and ferocious when roused. You have to watch Coromantees like a hawk, gentlemen, but you’ll get more work out of one of them in a week than you’ll get out of six Eboes. Am I not correct, Mr Fyfe?’ he finished, by way of variation.
‘Indeed you are, sir,’ said Davie Fyfe, ‘and to what you’ve said I’ll add that, being of a strong constitution, they don’t get so sick as the others.’
‘We should have some Coromantees then,’ said James to his brother, ‘when we are planters. They sound like the negers for us.’
‘And how,’ said John, ‘do you intend that we pay for them?’
James did not answer that question then. Nor did he address it the following day, when they went to the scramble with Underwood and saw him in action picking up bargains. A large wooden pen had been filled with a couple of hundred Africans. Once a set price had been agreed, a drum sounded, the gates were opened and in rushed the planters or their overseers, each carrying a coil of rope identified by a couple of handkerchiefs tied to it.
Underwood, sweat lashing off him and his wig toppling on his head like a skein of yellow knitting, moved with amazing speed, grabbing at the arms of terrified Africans, quickly inserting a thumb into some of their mouths to check the state of their teeth, slipping his hand between their buttocks (it was known for ships’ surgeons to stop slaves’ anuses with oakum, to disguise the fact that they had the flux), pummelling and punching at their legs to test them for strength, and all the while playing out the rope, the loose end of which James had offered to hold.
‘Bring it round, sir, enclose them, that one, that one there, sir, the big bullish one,’ Underwood roared, making himself heard above a similar racket issuing from the mouth of every other white man in the scrum. James darted after Underwood like an elf behind an ogre. Every few seconds he turned back to John, who was following at a distance and doing his best to avoid bodily contact with anyone. There was an appalled look in James’s eyes, but he was also laughing uproariously. He began to wave the rope-end in black faces, and when they cowered or shied away his laugh got louder. It was as if, having decided to do something distasteful, he discovered that he quite enjoyed it.
In less than a quarter of an hour, Underwood had got himself seven new slaves, corralled by the rope like unwilling participants in some grotesque parlour game, and was settling up with the slave-ship captains.
That evening, long after Underwood had loaded his new purchases on board ship for Westmoreland, the brothers discussed the scramble over supper in their lodgings.
‘It was disgusting,’ John said.
‘You mean it offended you?’ James asked. ‘Your moral sensibilities?’
‘No, I mean it disgusted me. The noise and sweat and brutishness of it.’
‘It was impressive, too, though,’ James said. ‘Not Underwood – he’s a buffoon. But the fact that a man like that has such power over others.’
‘He certainly had no compunction about checking his wares.’ John had an image of the fat planter’s fingers running over black skin.
‘You’ll have to do the same,’ James said, ‘so you’d better get used to it. And you will. It doesn’t have to be so uncivilised.’ A sly look came over his face and he leaned forward. ‘Listen, John, here’s what I propose. We’ll be planters, and we’ll be better than the likes of Underwood, far better. But first we’ll be surgeons. I’ve been thinking about it all day. Davie’ll teach us, he’ll take us on as apprentices when he gets the business, he’ll not have to pay us much, not till we learn a little anyway. Well, you needn’t look so gloomy, you must have seen a fair display of wounds, quite a pack of sick men, in the last year or two.’
‘It’s true. But all those black bodies crushed together. It unnerved me.’
‘Well, treating them’s only common sense, surely, and luck, and having a strong belly. After what you’ve been through it’ll be bairn’s play; and if you can manage it, I can. And we’ll use our fees to buy slaves. We’ll do it right, though, not like that madness this forenoon. We’ll go direct to the slave ships, and buy us some Coromantees.’
‘But we’ve no qualifications,’ John protested. ‘The island is awash with surgeons, real surgeons.’
‘Ah, but we’re Scotch, which Mr Underwood seems to consider as fine a qualification as any. And how many of these real surgeons you speak of have ever been challenged to produce their degrees? We studied in Glasgow, or Aberdeen, or Edinburgh, it doesn’t matter which, none of the medical men here are young enough to say it’s odd how they never met us in the dissecting room – except Davie, and he’ll not betray us. And if we’re lacking our papers it’s because of our political indiscretions, which obliged us to leave a wee bit hurriedly. Nobody will care, if only we’re competent. There’s to be an amnesty soon anyway, they’re saying, for folk like you that were out. So we must practise, and get competence, and Davie’s the man that will help us to get it. And in any event it’ll only be practising on slaves, so we can afford a few minor mistakes. A few major ones, even.’
‘We’d need land, too,’ said John. ‘No point in having slaves if we’ve nowhere to work them.’
‘There’s land a-plenty here. But we’ll keep an eye out for what’s already been reclaimed and planted. Buy a share in a small plantation, buy the whole of it, and build it up.’
‘Maybe to leeward,’ John said, ‘in the west, where Underwood and George Kinloch are. Westmoreland’s the youngest parish, it’s not so congested as this end.’
‘Aye,’ James said, ‘we’ll get over to leeward in a while. But first we’ll be doctors. What do you say?’
John Wedderburn thought of touching black flesh, cutting into it, gangrenous rot, infestations, flux, fever. He remembered the limb-scattered field of Culloden. Surely he could steel himself. Surely he could.
He smiled at his brother. ‘You’re a scoundrel, James. I say we shall be doctors.’
A dozen miles north and west of Savanna-la-Mar, the main town and port of Westmoreland, the westernmost parish of Jamaica, the soil-rich plain of the Cabarita river gave way to the lower slopes of the mountains. Here, a rough road curled up into the hills, and the landscape took on a wilder aspect than that of the sugar-growing flat land that stretched down to the sea. Wilder, and yet somehow comfortingly familiar. Up in the hills the heat was less intense, less humid. If you discounted the size and abundance of the vegetation, you could almost believe yourself to be in a Scottish glen.
This was what John Wedderburn had thought when he had first inspected the area with a view to buying property, two or three years after his arrival in Jamaica. A further ten