Haggard Read Free Page B

mile from the Great House.
    And now, with their conspiracies, they had forced him to kill or be killed.
    Dogs barked, and the mastitis frisked about the mare, who ignored them as she knew them so well. Haggard had in fact been riding across his own land for some time, but now he was approaching the town. For Haggard's Penn was a town. Beyond the wide wooden gateway through which the moonlight streamed there was a pleasant pasture, watered by a little stream, and providing grazing for a herd of cows. The estate buildings were half a mile farther on. To the right of the drive was first the circular, many-arched sugar house, and then the boiling house, dominated by the tall, square chimney, now silent like a monument as the cane was not yet fully ripe, and beyond that the slave logies, arranged in orderly rows, each backed by its own carefully cultivated vegetable garden. To the left of the drive waited the houses of European staff, and the chapel, every one whitewashed and with a substantial red shingled roof to keep off the annual rainstorms brought by the hurricane winds of the early autumn.
    Farther off yet, set half a mile from the nearest other habitation, was the Great House. The Haggards had planted in Barbados for over a hundred and fifty years, coming to the islands in the very early days of the colony when the Courteens and the Willoughbys had still been debating ownership. Thus the house retained traces of its less secure heritage in the massive stone cellars which formed its foundation, loopholed as a last refuge for the family and their retainers against revolting slaves or marauding pirates. Above, the great windows and the wide opened doors gleamed with light, for Middlesex lit every candle every night for all that only the master and his infant son actually lived in the house. But every window and every door was also guarded by a thick shutter. Nowadays these acted as protection against hurricane winds, but they too suggested a stormy past.
    The gambolling dogs had alerted the watchmen, and they hurried forward to escort their master, seven of them, big black men armed with nightsticks, and happy to see their favourite white man. Whatever Haggard's dark moods, he seldom directed them at his own people.
    'Man, Mr. John, but you home early.'
    'Man, Mr. John, but it ain't midnight yet.'
    'Man, Mr. John, but them white people ain't still dancing?'
    They reached the foot of the steps leading up to the verandah, and Haggard swung himself from the saddle.
    They're still dancing,' he said. 'Abraham, I wish you to saddle up and ride into Bridgetown. Fetch me Mr. Lucas.'
    'Eh-eh? But he going be happy to come out this time, Mr. John?'
    'You tell him I want him here before dawn. Tell him it is an urgent matter.' Haggard climbed the stairs, confronted James Middlesex, his butler. It had been his father's fancy to name all the house slaves after English counties.
    'Mr. John?' Middlesex peered at him. 'I going fetch the port.'
    'Not tonight, James. The boy asleep?'
    'Oh, yes, man, Mr. John.' But Middlesex frowned. Haggard seldom inquired after his son. Enough that the boy's life had been purchased at the expense of his mother's.
    Haggard walked into the hallway. He had not bothered to replace his pumps with boots, and his feet did no more than whisper on the polished mahogany floor. But even the whisper echoed. The hall was some thirty feet deep and rose twenty feet above his head. The walls were hung with pictures of past Haggards, the stands filled with walking sticks and sporting guns, and hats; Haggard added his to the collection. To his right, archways gave into the withdrawing room, another vast area of polished floors and uncomfortable chairs and low incidental tables laden with brass ornaments. The smoking room, shrouded in netting to repel mosquitoes, lay beyond; here were the billiards table and the baize-topped card table, as well as the deep trays for cigar ash. On his left a similar archway allowed access to the