"Master Stone," he said heartily, "on behalf of King William and Queen Mary, I thank you for your service to the Crown. And in my own name, before my staff, I want to express my own appreciation by granting you a full and unconditional pardon for your past—let us call them—indiscretions. Here are your weapons, which I freely return to you as a sign of my trust."
"Thank you, sir." Jeremy took his sword and pistol and bowed first to Sir Arthur, then to the other officers. "I take it, sir, that the messenger's story was somewhat similar to my own?"
"Virtually identical. I sent an experienced cavalry officer into the town, and he suffered several minor wounds at the hands of the rascals who have taken over Port Royal. But he escaped from them and returned to me. You will be relieved to hear, as I was, that a spirited defense is being conducted at King's House, so your prediction that Their Majesties' flag would be torn from its standard there has not come true. I intend to see that it does not and have already given orders for a forced march to the capital. We will leave this encampment in an hour, and I will feel honored if you will ride with me and my staff." He glanced past Jeremy and seemed to become conscious of Dirk for the first time. "A suitable place will be found for you too," he added hurriedly, embarrassed by his seeming lack of courtesy.
Jeremy bowed his acceptance of the honor being bestowed on him, but despite his restoration to official grace his mind was racing ahead to other things. "What of this expedition against the Maroons, Your Excellency?"
The officers laughed wryly, and one of them, a colonel with a thin aristocratic face, sat upright. "We've found the very excuse we need to call off this damned campaign," he said in the new, slow drawl that had recently become so fashionable at St. James's Palace. "The Maroons are as unobliging as they are inhospitable, and we're delighted to have found a valid reason to break off our engagement with them."
Sir Arthur frowned at his subordinate for saying too much, then turned back to Jeremy. "I have decided to issue a proclamation granting a blanket pardon to the people who call themselves Maroons," he said blandly. "Perhaps you can be of further assistance to me. Master Stone, and can tell me how to send an officer to them with word of my generosity. I don't know how to establish a contact with them and I don't want an officer murdered."
"I think I can arrange the matter for you. Your Excellency." The young gunsmith was suddenly lighthearted; he was certainly responsible in part for this termination of the hill campaign and was thus canceling the debt he owed the Maroons for saving his life. "The two Negroes who accompanied me here are prominent in the Maroon hierarchy, and I am sure they will be glad to take word to their leader."
"Maroons? In our camp?" The colonel leaped to his feet, his drawl forgotten. "Hang the filthy "
The governor general glared coldly at his staff member.
*There will be no hangings," he said severely. "The pardon is already in effect, Colonel Howard. We can allow nothing to interfere with the crushing of the rebellion that has broken out in the town. Gentlemen, I want all of you to remember that our sole concern henceforth is to win a victory over the insurrectionists. We can not and will not allow Their Majesties' flag to be despoiled!"
Chapter Seventeen
CHAOS reigned in Port Royal, and the sharp crack of musket fire sounded from every quarter of the town. In many sections of the community personal grudges were being settled by the crudest possible means, for the law had been overthrown and there was no authority to uphold its principles or its administration. Respectable householders bolted their doors and fastened their shutters, and the men of each family stood guard, often with ancient fowling pieces and rusty pistols. Homes without adequate protection had been looted and in some cases completely sacked, for small bands of Negroes, free men, and runaway slaves alike roamed the streets and robbed anyone who looked prosperous.
Business had come to a complete standstill, and shop fronts were covered with heavy wrought-iron grilles. The taverns and inns had all closed and strong guards had been established over liquor supplies, but the rioters had unearthed considerable quantities of rum from unknown sources and many of the marauders who were terrorizing the citizenry were drunk. Private vendettas flared up into the open at the bawdyhouses, and more than one overpainted harlot was stabbed and killed by a sister trollop.
Plantation masters remained at their estates and devoted their full energies to preventing an open rebellion of their slaves. Word spread that the owner of a vast tract of sugar cane had been murdered in his manor near Spanish Town, and later rumors indicated that his wife and daughters had been raped, then locked inside the house, which had finally been set afire. Such reports increased the nervousness of the more substantial residents, and those who secretly owned shares in the boucanier ships immediately sent appeals to the captains of the vessels for aid. To their chagrin they learned that the masters as well as their crews had openly declared for the Duchess of Glasgow and had taken up arms in her behalf.
The military situation, which had been confused, was at last becoming painfully clear. The artillerymen of the royal brigade, who had not accompanied the remainder of the troops on the punitive expedition against the Maroons, had been taken by surprise when the initial assault had been launched against them and had suffered badly. No more than two hundred in number at the outset, they had been further crippled by an unwise decision on the part of their commanding officer, Major the Honorable Burnett-Tilden, who had spread his men over too great an area. The headquarters platoon, which had taken up residence in the Citadel, had been annihilated; among the dead were the major himself and Ensign Sir Morton Ellery, youngest son of the Duke of Portland.
Approximately one third of the artillerymen had not been on duty when Caroline and her military advisers had launched their first attack, and some had been either captured or struck down in the rum shops and houses of prostitution. However, the majority of those on leave had managed to make their way to King's House, where they had joined the company that had been detailed to serve as a temporary honor guard. The battered remnants of the other platoons had also fought through the ranks of howling boucaniers to King's House, and here the only organized resistance to Caroline still flickered.
There were perhaps ninety men of the original complement still able to fire a musket, and they opposed a horde that outnumbered them by at least three or four to one. Nevertheless, the strict discipline and rigorous training of the Royal Army had its effect, and the soldiers more than held their own. Pushed back by sheer weight of numbers, they retreated slowly across the extensive lawns of the palace and finally dug in for a last stand inside the walls of King's House itself. Costly furniture was piled high at doors and windows, and the women who remained, led by Lady Bartlett, cooked for the soldiers, cared for the wounded and loaded muskets.
This was the situation as the weary troop of calvary led the brigade into the outskirts of Port Royal after a long march. Humiliated at having been forced to acknowledge at least technical defeat by the Maroons, bone-tired after their journey, and showing in their faces and sagging shoulders what tropical heat and rain had done to them, they little resembled the smartly uniformed automatons who had swaggered off to the hills only a few days before. Even the trumpets and snare drums were silent now, for the music-makers had been given muskets and taken into the ranks of fighting men to replace those who had fallen ill with dysentery or the Yellow Death.
Scouts who had been sent ahead apprised Sir Arthur Bartlett of the precarious position of the defenders of King's House, and the governor general ordered two battalions to make a concerted rush on the boucaniers who had the palace under siege. The troops revived somewhat as they charged through the narrow streets, and a ragged cheer went up when they saw that the pennant of William and Mary still flew from the roof. But the sound died in their throats when a score of cannon boomed from the direction of the King's House lawn and heavy iron balls came crashing down on the flimsy houses fringing the plaza. The troops halted, then retreated, and their officers hurried to Sir Arthur and his staff for consultation and instruction.