the Wedderburns subscribed, believed the opposite: that it paid to keep your Negroes in reasonable health. Nobody, however, could be accused of getting things out of proportion. Whatever your thinking, it was not in the end about slave welfare. It was about money.
Now John and James Wedderburn were looking down from Glen Isla on the source of that money. ‘Half a life,’ said James. ‘Or not much less, anyway. That’s how long we’ve been here.’ Then he began to laugh.
‘What?’ John asked. ‘What’s so amusing?’
‘Just that I was thinking, our father was the fifth Baronet of Blackness, whereas you have become the first Baronet of Blackness.’
‘Very good, James.’
‘But think of it, John. In ’45, Papa took only you as his retinue. Were the opportunity to arise again, you could bring four dozen Coromantees to the Prince’s standard. That’s a whole Highland glen.’
‘And you could bring a company of your own black bairns.’ In the last year, James had delivered two of the girls that kept house at Bluecastle of babies which he freely admitted were his own. Boys, both thriving. ‘We may soon be able to count them in dozens also.’
‘Well, and what of it?’ James was still grinning at his brother, who was staring steadfastly ahead.
‘You know how little Papa would have approved of that … miscegenation of which you are so fond.’
‘I’m not sure I do. I never spoke to him about matters of the flesh, even though we had that time together in the prison.’ This was a dig at John, a reminder of his exclusion from those visits. ‘But in any event you are not him, and Abba and Jenny are not yours. Well, I suppose you have a part share in them. Not that you make any claim on it – not that I’d object if you did. For all practical purposes they’re mine to do with what I like.’
‘That’s evident. I hope you’ll not live to regret it.’
‘I’ll not. And nor will the lassies, if the bairns live.’ A challenge had entered James’s voice. ‘I’ve told you before, I’m going to set them free, mothers and bairns, if they reach ten years. I’ve told them too.’
‘It’ll be throwing money away.’
‘Perhaps. But I’ll not have my own blood chained for life.’
‘That’s very noble of you.’
‘Ach, John, you should learn to relax. You’re so cold. Are you never tempted yourself?’
‘I intend to marry a Scotswoman whenever I return home.’
‘As do I. A good, clean, virginal, white Scotswoman. Or maybe a rich widow. Marriage is a different matter altogether. But I could not tolerate this heat and this life without the black lassies to relieve my passion. It keeps the fever out of me.’
‘You really do think that, don’t you?’
‘Well, look at me. Fit and healthy. Mind you, so are you.’
‘We are different.’
‘Aye, hot and cold. I’m rum and you’re ice. Perhaps that’s just our different ways of surviving here. But I can’t be like you.’
‘Nor I like you. We’ve always been different. But we complement one another.’
‘We do here. We’ve had to. It was not always like that. I’d have been too hot for Scotland in ’45. If I’d been allowed to come with you, I’d probably have concluded my life at Culloden, or with Papa in London.’
‘Well, you should thank God you did not. Think what you’d have missed. And thank Him that those days are by with, James. I may never warm to a German king but I’ll live under one readily enough when I go home.’
‘You’d not come out for Charles, if he came again?’
‘No, and nor would you and well you know it. I’d not offer my sword to a Stewart now, even if there were one worthy of it. There’s too much to lose.’ They looked again at the wealth creation going on below. ‘Half a lifetime, James, as you say. We were boys then, both of us. Just the eighteen months between us, but I, you’ll mind, was sixteen and thus old enough to die for a cause. Not now. Now I am old enough not to die for a cause. There is only one cause – one’s own self and one’s family –’
‘Which you don’t yet have –’
‘You forget Mama and our sisters. One’s self, one’s family, and the prosperity of these. Nothing else matters.’
‘And the relief of passion,’ said James. ‘That matters to me a great deal.’
They remounted and rode downhill, threading in and out of the shade until the road levelled out, then struck off towards the mill. Wilson, the bookkeeper, was managing operations. There were other white overseers in the fields, but the three of them were the only white men in the mill – the distiller, boilerman, packers, coopers and other skilled workers were all black. The place was a clammy hive of activity. The noise and heat and sweet stench of the crushed cane were oppressive and heady. After a few minutes the Wedderburns left Wilson and his men to it, and rode back to the coolness of the house.
Within a fortnight, the rest of the cane was in, cut and crushed. From the mill’s boilers vast quantities of liquid had been run off to make low wines for the slaves and rum for the mother country; the remaining juice had been cooled, allowed to granulate, and packed into hogsheads. The fields lay slashed and brown, ready to be planted for the next season. The field gangs were exhausted, the mill slaves hardly less so. Crop Over: a holiday for all of them. From their hut village down on the plain, the noise of their singing and drumming drifted up.
The Wedderburns were tolerant of it: the sounds, hesitating almost deferentially at the open windows, enhanced their own sense of superiority, of being proprietors. John imagined a big house in Scotland where the lowing of cattle beside a bright splashing burn might have the same effect. Such a house would be far more substantial and imposing than the wood, clay and brick edifice he had here, grand though this was in comparison with the accommodations of his white overseers, let alone the slaves’ huts. There would be a tree-lined avenue, perhaps, leading up to the porticoed entrance; stone columns and balconies instead of the wooden porch; enormous, roaring fireplaces in carpeted drawing room and oak-panelled dining room. Not these sweating uneven walls that were home to a multitude of scurrying beetles, cockroaches and green lizards. On evenings when he was by himself, John Wedderburn walked the rooms of that imagined house: sometimes he walked them alone; sometimes with a graceful, lily-white lady on his arm.
For Crop Over he had granted the slaves a few goats to slaughter, and made presents of some bolts of Lancashire coloured cotton for the women to turn into gaudy holiday clothes – a gesture, he was pleased to think, that far exceeded the annual suit of working clothes island law obliged him to provide each slave. Not that anyone ever checked – which made his provision still nobler. Who was going to check? His neighbours? The magistrates from Savanna? And who, more to the point, was going to complain?
He had worked out a few years ago that if he could keep one in every three acres of the estate under cane, and from them produce around a ton of sugar for each slave, at current prices he would achieve a very acceptable profit. Another third of the land he devoted to animal grazing and provision-growing for the house and workforce, and the final portion – mostly on the hills – was woodland, from which he was gradually extracting some excellent timber. This year, by a combination of working the blacks hard and storm-free weather, the sugar crop had been excellent. Although his calculations were not complete, he estimated it at nearly one and a half tons per slave. Furthermore, Britain and France were at war, struggling for territorial control of North America and economic mastery of India, and occasionally attacking some of each other’s smaller Caribbean islands. The war had driven the London sugar price up to thirty-five shillings a hundredweight. He had every reason to feel thankful to Providence, and therefore generous to his workforce.