The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (28 page)

Bridgetown had grown, too, the houses now crawling up the low hill, most made of white coral bricks but many made of clay bricks and wooden shingles, nearly all with complex fretwork in their verandahs, like wooden lace. And so many people! As I walked through the town, unaccustomedly nervous, I realized that the changes in the land had brought other changes, too. Gone was the air of indolence, which caused even the Widow Simmons to nap after noon. Most of the people seemed bustling and purposeful. There were two ships in the bay, sailors and slaves busy unloading bricks and crates and iron-hooped barrels. I saw many more women in the street, though men still far outnumbered them.

There was another more obvious change among the people: the Negro slaves now far outnumbered both Christian men and women. These dark-skinned people alone reminded me of the old Bridgetown, for they moved around with no particular haste, pretending to hurry only if their masters lashed them with the whip. The Negroes and the cane were the biggest change in the island, and I wondered if the English people who had come here first did not now feel foreign. But I saw that they did not. There was a self-satisfied expression to every Christian face I saw, reflected by a luxurious adornment, which came from being masters. But I noted as well a nervousness of gesture and voice, that also reflected the uneasiness of the master. There had been an uprising recently, I learned, and eighteen slave-leaders had been hanged. So the Christian people had this tension, like people always expecting a hurricane. The Negroes, though subservient and cautious, lacked that unease.

But the most amazing change I discovered on that first day in Bridgetown had to do entirely with myself. I was walking along the main street, well-cobbled now, observing the new wooden signs with carved-out letters hung on iron brackets. Business in the newly-wealthy town was obviously thriving: there was Tailor, Cobbler, Dry Goods, Boar's Head Inn, King's Tavern and others. Reading these signs, I grew faint and had to stop and lean against a near wall. I had done it so casually that the realization was like an actual blow to my wind. I had read the signs! The letters, which in all my years had been only meaningless shapes, now made sense!

I knew that I had lived almost two centuries: in all that time, I had never experienced a greater pleasure than at that moment. I stood on the street for a long time, simply drinking in those carved words.

This small miracle made me more aware of the three ghosts within me. But their memories were separate, distant. They were men. Their ghosts seemed without reference to my present life. Yet I knew their roots were within my soul, as the reading showed, as the act with the two sailors had shown, and as other more subtle things also showed.

It did not take me long to set myself up in Bridgetown (or, to be more accurate, just outside Bridgetown). I bought materials and some slaves and hired a builder. My house had to be designed carefully. I had the builder lay it out so the front faced the rest of the town, rather than east-west as everyone else did in order to take best advantage of the cooling winds. But I required different advantages. I wanted my house to look like that of a decent woman: Gothic lines, upright rectangular windows with wooden shutters, and a delicate fretwork in a wave-and-palm frond design enclosing my verandah. Behind this I built a single large room, slightly higher than the house, with an enclosed loft that could be reached only by a stair from the inside of the house. The space downstairs had a bar, shelves, and discreet booths. I bought an Irish servant to run it, for I knew that the town's good citizens would find ways to close down any woman who had the temerity to be a publican. Indeed, I knew that some of the town's good citizens were already discomfited at my mere presence among them. So, whilst my house was being built, I sat down in the dark little room I was renting from a good Christian family and wrote each of my former customers a note, assuring them of my discretion. I told them of my plan to open an inn and assured them further that, when they visited, I would greet them as complete strangers.

I can hardly convey what delight it was to take pen in hand and form those unaccustomed letters, stroking the letters into cunning words, words dashing across the page into whole sentences. The writing I had done before, in other lives, had been driven by loss, by guilt, by fear. These short epistles were pure luxury, almost. I took more joy in the physical act of writing itself than in the ensuring of my security. Some of the men who had come to me in my hovel were, I knew, educated. I could not understand why, having this skill, this gift, they would come to me at all. Writing was far better than sex! Later, in England, I penned a stark account of my life. But that has been lost and what you read now comes out of my still-vivid memories of that life, for which I had no words while living it.

When my house was finished and I had bought supplies, I was almost out of capital. But I was not concerned. From Antam Gonçalves I now grasped the ways of commerce. Within days, my inn was doing a reasonable trade. I'd known this would happen: the men would come simply out of novelty. The main novelty was, of course, myself. Innkeepers were usually fat men with large moustaches. I, hair elegantly coiffured, always in a low-cut dress, moved among my customers with superb grace. I presented myself from the first as a lady; only those who already knew would have dared request services more intimate than my serving them ale or wine. This was how I intended it, at least at the beginning.

Of course, the secret of any successful establishment is to keep the customers coming back. I had, I thought, learned enough from my days in the wild. My place, which I called simply Settlers' Inn, was sufficiently out of the town to encourage the good burghers to visit. It was dimly-lit, and had enclosed seating, ensuring they could avoid each other's eyes; and it had the secret loft for those who were willing and able to pay the large sum I would demand for other services. Yet 'twas not these elements, but certain other decisions I made, for reasons unconnected to my inn, which soon made it the most popular establishment on Barbados.

One of these decisions was to sell all the slaves I had bought – seven in number. I did so because, soon after opening, I was conversing to a planter about the recent slave uprising and he mentioned that the leader had been a slave named Hamilcar. I had not thought about Hamilcar in years and yet, hearing his name so casually mentioned in the past tense, it was as though he had held my small girl's hand only the day before. A few shocked questions confirmed that the slave leader was indeed the same Hamilcar who had comforted me after my mother's death. There had, in fact, been no actual uprising, though one had indeed been in the making. But the planters had learned of the planned massacre from a sympathetic slave, and struck first. All the leaders had been rooted out and hanged and their bodies left on the gibbet for days as a grim reminder to the other blacks. I remembered Hamilcar – his dark eyes and his gentle touch. 'Twas hard to believe that this same man could have planned to kill every Christian on the island. Would he have killed me too, I wondered – not that he could have. I did not know, but I knew what had driven him to it: I had been there when he had been flogged in the public square. That decided me. If this was what slavery did to a kind and gentle man, then I could not be a slave-owner. But, common sense asserting itself, neither could I afford to simply release my slaves: not only did I not have any money left to throw away, but they would simply be taken by someone else. There were no free blacks in Barbados I knew of. I had assumed the Shadowman was free but, when I inquired about such a Negro, no one even knew of him.

Nonetheless, 'twas the thought of the Shadowman that decided my course of action. I exchanged my seven slaves, five men and two women, for two strapping male Negroes. These were my bodyguards. They were my slaves in law, but I paid them servants' wages in order to ensure their loyalty. I did not think they could stop the Shadowman, if he came to kill me, but they might prove a sufficient obstacle to allow me to escape. For the other duties about my house and inn, I hired seven indentured servants, all Irish, ‘redlegs' as we called them, for a goodly supply of prisoners had been shipped to the West Indies because of the political battles in faraway Britain.

Just at the time I opened my inn, the great upheaval had taken place in England: Charles I had been beheaded by Oliver Cromwell. These Englishmen were no more than names to me. But, in Barbados, the politics of the Mother Country thousands of miles away caused great conflict. The colonists were split into two camps, called the Cavaliers and the Roundheads. The former was made up mostly of gentry, clergy and peasants. They supported the King. The latter included merchants, planters, even some nobles. They supported the Parliament. I had customers from both sides and the Settlers' Inn became a centre for discussion and argument – this because, with its Christian servants and well-muscled Negroes and woman owner, 'twas considered a safe venue. Throughout all the months that the island was split asunder, not a drop of blood was spilt over this heated cause, even when Cromwell passed the Navigation Act and declared the leading Barbados colonists to be traitors.

But, while all this made my inn initially popular, 'twas not these things that kept the men coming back after the Articles of Surrender were drawn up in January of 1652 when Cromwell sent a fleet of ships to reclaim the colony for Parliament. The only aspect of this which impacted upon me was that I got extra custom from the sailors who came with the conquering fleet. I even had to hire extra help for those months. But the continued prosperity of my inn was based upon a factor more constant. Not to put too fine a point 'pon it: what kept my customers coming, was coming.

I have said that, with the advent of the Negro slaves, men had no real need to come out to my far hovel. I suppose few would have paid my admittedly outrageous sums save for certain factors. One factor was that a few prominent citizens were still worried that I might speak and so paid me to remain quiet (but thought that, inasmuch as they were paying me, they might as well take advantage of my services). Other men, who had easy access to Negro women, simply liked white flesh for variety. There were a few other women in Bridgetown who provided similar services, but all of them were poor and dirty. And none of them provided the exact services I did, which brings me to the main factor that was to account for my remarkable success in my unchosen profession.

I was simply very good at what I did.

When I had been with Sean O' Flannery, I had been wanton in our lovemaking because I knew that was what he liked. But I did what pleased him because I knew it pleased him, not because I myself took any especial pleasure in such acts. But now that was changed. I understood men. I understood their bodies. I knew those secret places where a mere stroke of the fingers, a simple lick of the tongue, brought back-stretching pleasure. In formal arrangements like ours, or even within the more formal arrangement of marriage, men do not much care if a woman takes pleasure in the act. But the men thought I took true pleasure in all the wanton, and often strange, things they asked of me. This gave them pride in the act. I knew how to use my mouth and my hands and my holes to give complete satisfaction. And I knew, what was most important of all, that a man's complete satisfaction never lasts very long. Indeed, the more complete it is, the sooner he returns begging for more.

I even received several proposals of marriage, much to my surprise. Even with my new knowledge of men, I had not expected that anyone would wish to marry a woman such as I. But it seemed so – although all my proposals came from men who had residences in the Mother Country. I refused them all, anyway. I was mistress of my own place, had my own money, and did work I enjoyed. I even had a certain degree of power in shaping the affairs of the colony. To give all that up for the life of a respectable wife seemed not to me a good deal.

There did come a time, however, when I decided to become a respectable woman. But, before I tell of that, there is one more incident I must recount.

By 1658, when Cromwell died, my brothel was doing such a thriving business that I had hired girls both to serve and to service the customers. I insisted they be clean and polite and understand that their goal was to satisfy the customer. I myself provided services now only to the wealthiest of my customers (though occasionally if I saw a man, usually a passing sailor, who caught my fancy, I changed him only an affordable rate). The good biddies of Barbados, both male and female, were naturally outraged at the existence of such an establishment. But I could not be closed down, not only because several of my customers were the most prominent and powerful citizens on the island, but also because the colonists' rank hypocrisy made it impossible to admit in public that customers did not go to the Settlers' Inn just for the ale. (There was much preaching from the pulpit about the evils of drink, though.)

I estimate that by 1658 I was the wealthiest women on the island, though this only meant that I was not even quarter as wealthy as an even moderately successful planter. But my fortunes were to change and the starting-point lay in a night several years previously, when Bartleby came in.

I recognized him at once. He had not changed much in the nigh twenty years since he had sold me to the Widow Simmons. His hair and beard now had broad streaks of gray and his stomach curved out amply beneath his cotton shirt, but he was still a powerful-looking man, and his face was still calmly brutal. When I took a seat at his table, he looked at me as though I were a stranger.

I said, ‘I am Sarah.'

His face remained blank for some moments, then his eyes widened. His expression became cautious. ‘You work here?'

I smiled. ‘I own here.'

He did not believe me. But he said nothing. He took a swig from his pewter mug, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. But his eyes swivelled uncomfortably away from my own. I said, ‘Actually, 'tis you I have to thank for this.'