24.

  Cato Street

  In mid-May, while placing the newspapers on the sideboard, he spotted a black face in a strange cartoon on the front page: The Spencean Philanthropists. A group of men in wigs and gowns and topcoats and spectacles danced in a circle, as if round a maypole, but at the top of this pole were five heads on spikes. Four pink heads and one black. Bogle sat down where he was and read their names.

  Brunt

  Ings

  Thistlewood

  Tidd

  Davidson

  Davidson’s was the head that had drawn his attention: he turned out to be a Creole from Kingston. Together these headless men were ‘radicals’. Like Jack, they hated Lord Sidmouth, and claimed the land belonged to all, and they wanted ‘universal suffrage’, and the return of something called ‘habeas corpus’. In a hayloft on Cato Street these men had conspired to murder the rulers of England, as revenge for Peterloo, and to free the English from their present ‘state of slavery’ – a phrase Bogle re-read three times before dismissing it as a printer’s error. He read on: the plot was foiled. There was a spy in their midst. With trepidation he traced his finger down the remainder of the long column, looking for the name ‘Jack’, and finding instead another familiar name: Robert Wedderburn. But Wedderburn, who had many prior dealings with the condemned men, happened to be already safely in gaol on the night in question – imprisoned for ‘seditious writings’ – and so still had a head on his shoulders. Bogle looked at this strange cartoon a long time, feeling something at last. But what? An irritating mental itch which, as he went to scratch it, he found he couldn’t reach.

  25.

  Thistlewood! Wedderburn!

  It was almost harvest time. Bogle set off on the long ride to Saint Catherine’s to collect the five men Hope had rented for the season. Around midday, he came to the burned-out remnants of Thistlewood’s old place, Breadnut Pen, where it bordered Wedderburn’s estate. He stopped his donkey in its tracks. Thistlewood. Wedderburn. Could it be? But Thistlewood was thirty years dead! He only lived on in the memory, a species of bogeyman whom old women employed in their stories, to scare misbehaving children. Wedderburn’s estate, meanwhile, was neither closed up nor sold. Besides, why would any young Wedderburn or young Thistlewood conspire against their elders? People added up, they did not tear away, or turn the world upside down, it made no sense – and no doubt England was as full of Wedderburns and Thistlewoods as Jamaica was of Cudjoes and Pompeys. Then again, children are sometimes a bitter harvest. He had heard old women say so. Sometimes they did not come to add-up. Instead they undid – they destroyed. They cursed their fathers, and burned their houses to the ground. This was called the revenge of the young. Bogle looked out over the pieces, remembering London and Wedderburn and his strangling hands, so full of feeling. He himself was younger than Wedderburn, but he had always been quiet by temperament, watchful. He knew by now that hate would never come to him as easily as despair, or the feeling of no feeling. And if this headless Thistlewood was in reality one of the Jamaican Thistlewoods, he thought it must have helped in some way to at least have a father to curse, and a home to destroy. That was surely like having a target for an arrow. Bogle meanwhile sat on his donkey and despaired. What did he have?

  26.

  The Eternal Return of Johanna

  When the bougainvillea began to shrivel and the rains stopped, Johanna returned. She was not the same woman he had loved. They tied your hands to a giant treadmill, as if you were a donkey, and whipped you as you walked all day, until the trough beneath your feet filled with blood. He tried to speak to her of love, as he had once done, and to tell her of what he had seen in England. Her eyes rolled in her head. She would not listen to anything but her own voice. She laughed at him. She had always laughed at him but this laugh was different. She said: ‘You are a fool, Bogle. I had a dream. I see it all.’

  27.

  The Prophetic Circular Dream of Little Johanna

  will SEE that we have done what the earth herself FORBID. But I have a DREAM and it is the TRUTH and believe me it will come to pass. I tell you the world is UPSIDE DOWN. These people are BAHAMA GRASS! Wherever they PLANT DEM ROOT they SPREAD and DESTROY! This is hidden from FOOLISH BOYS but not from ME. I have a DREAM. I know that this time will END and a new time will BEGIN, as it is written in their books and in the DIRT IN MY MOUTH and in the shit of that old Devil OBBONEY himself. I have seen the SECRET ENGINE OF THE WORLD! Some fools say the world rests on the back of a turtle, but that is a FAIRY TALE FOR PICKNEY! The world rest upon THE TREADMILL! I have SEEN it. I have a DREAM. The TREADMILL TURNS, it never STOPS, and atop it rests every SHINING CITY and SHIP and GOLD COIN and all KINGS AND QUEENS and LORDS AND LADIES and all CHURCH MEN for it is a TREADMILL WET WITH BLOOD and it is the SECRET ENGINE OF THE WORLD! Whoever walks it will WEEP and say look at me brought so LOW! But I say ALL THINGS MUST TURN and who stands now SHALL FALL and all land that is closed SHALL BE OPEN and every BLADE OF BAHAMA will be CUT DOWN and THE DEAD WILL LIVE and the living die and KINGS SHALL WEEP and the people will enter their palaces and SHIT ON THEIR FLOORS and THERE WILL BE A RECKONING! Everything taken from us I WILL RESTORE! We shall have noses and eyes again and mouths and WE WILL SPEAK OF THE TREADMILL until the day of MOSES’ JUBILEE! I dreamt that NOTHING DIES and NOTHING IS FORGOTTEN for the TREADMILL IS A CIRCLE and there will be no end to circles until all have seen the TREADMILL and waded through its BLOOD. And even the BLIND WILL SEE IT, but it will be TOO LATE! CHUKWU SELA AKA, UWA AGWU! This world will BURN, it will cast us off, EVERY LAST ONE OF US, for she is TIRED OF US, and nothing will live and we

  28.

  Bahama Grass, 1826

  Four years passed before Tichborne returned to Hope. The first thing he did, upon arrival, was send Bogle for the accounts. Within a single year, two hundred and eighty-eight hogshead of sugar had declined to fifty, one hundred and forty-five puncheons of rum to only fourteen, and every corner of Hope that could be rented out had been, as if the Duke were a poor man in need of every penny he could squeeze from the ground. Tichborne wrote to the attorneys and discovered the true extent of the Duke’s debts. One hundred and fifty thousand pounds, relating to ‘Stowe and other expenses’. A two-night visit of the Russian Tsar, for example, had involved a redecoration costing ten thousand pounds. The King himself was ‘a regular visitor’ and this, too, had proved expensive. Tichborne dictated a letter to the Duke. It did not speak of his spending – that was unmentionable between them – but he asked the Duke to consider securing a water contract with the military camp downhill. The run-off from Hope’s mill could be easily redirected, it was a simple and practical plan, and would bring in some two thousand a year. The Duke disliked talking practically: a reply might take months. In the meantime, Tichborne worked himself into a fury about Bahama grass. It had been planted years ago by Ballard, intended as a pretty border round the estate, but had proved rapacious and near impossible to eradicate. It dug itself in everywhere, spread rapidly, sucked the life out of the soil, killed off native species, and was altogether a blight upon the land. Tichborne did not understand why Little Johanna laughed as he explained all this. He got Macintosh to task the women’s gang with the pointless task of pulling it up, root by root.

  29.

  Taken Off the Country

  In June, a small, vicarious pleasure came to Bogle: Ellis was to marry Dorinda. A dissenter church in Black River had agreed to it, and the sentimental Duchess had given special permission, writing a long letter describing marriage as a seal of virtue, a check on the passions, which no right-thinking Christian should ever try to keep from either the wretched poor nor the Africans, given their particular need of it. Bogle put on his white cottons and accompanied his dear friends to Black River. It was market day: the church was full of people. But when the banns were read and Ellis and his bride stood up, the people in the pews burst into laughter and mockery. It was several minutes before the minister could restore order: ‘And how do ye live yourselves? In sin, I’ll wager!’ The congregation bowed their heads as the minister spoke and fell silent. Dorinda wept. But his friends were married. Bogle tried to be happy for them, though it was a bittersweet feeling: his own Johanna refused to step foot in such a place. Still, he held out the hope of Johanna recovering her sanity, and the law changing, and of persuading her, one of these days. But even this idea – that he had such a thing as ‘days’ and hopes that might take place within them – turned out to be presumption. The next morning Tichborne still had not received his answer from the Duke, and in a fit of pique, quit his job and left the island, taking his page with him.

  30.

  A European Honeymoon

  They stopped in London for only a few days, to collect a woman – ‘Bogle, this is Mrs Kathryn Tichborne. We were married in May’ – and then left for Europe, on ‘honeymoon’. Here was a new word. Everything was new. Nobody ever explained where they were going or how long they would be staying once they got there. He soon learned it was better to sleep on dusty red tiles than the beds he was occasionally offered: cooler, fewer fleas. It was high summer. People assumed he should be used to the heat, when in fact he found it unpleasant, being so much drier than Jamaica and with no relieving rains. In Spain, a schoolboy pricked him with a pin, to see if he would bleed. In France, a chambermaid confessed to cutting a tuft of his hair as he slept, curious to know ‘if it truly grew by itself’. In Germany, a philosophical stable boy explained that as ‘one of the meek’ he would soon inherit the earth. Every church they visited was a golden palace, and yet the priests seemed, to Bogle, to be very sly, with their sandals and frayed gowns, playing at poverty. In Italy, more than a year into their travels, the Duke and Tichborne almost collided. Tichborne was heading to Venice and the Duke, as it turned out, was already there, sailing in the harbour, hiding from his British creditors. His boat was called the Anna Eliza and had cost sixteen thousand pounds. They were informed of all this one night in Rome, by a Viscount named Byng who himself owned ‘half of London and most of Bedfordshire’. Contemplating this fortunate young man of property seemed to depress Tichborne: he drank too much and retired early to his rooms. The next morning, he announced they would be doubling back on themselves and heading home, by way of Spain.

  In Paris, awaiting their final crossing, they received extraordinary news. A distant Doughty cousin had died, leaving Tichborne her entire estate, on the condition that he change his name to Doughty and produce a male heir. Mrs Tichborne was already pregnant: it was a good prospect. The estate included a large portion of Bloomsbury, as well as Upton House in Poole, Dorset. Tichborne was excitable, he kept jiggling around, making it difficult for Bogle to pull up his master’s trousers or fasten them.

  ‘Good news, Mr Edward. You are uprising in the world.’

  ‘Rising up, Bogle. But yes, I do rather seem to be.’

  Tichborne had always tracked the progress of his many brothers closely, and with a heavy heart. Now he began to wonder if his luck was turning. One brother had died in China, another in India, and a third on home soil. This placed him second in line. Meanwhile, the youngest Tichborne was still childless, and the eldest had been recently cursed with a seventh daughter, to add to the six he already had. Was it possible there would be no male heir? Back in England, Kathryn promptly gave birth to a little boy called Henry. Nothing could dent Edward’s new-found optimism. Not even the news that his little brother’s ridiculous French wife had just been blessed with a son of her own, called Roger.

  Volume Seven

  Then why suppose yourselves the chosen few?

  robert wedderburn

  1.

  D is for Doughty

  With the arrival of their baby Henry, Edward and Kathryn renounced the name of Tichborne and became Mr and Mrs Doughty, losing their temper with anyone who forgot this. For a while, Bogle inked a D into his own palm, as a reminder. The household moved to Upton. The property came with its own estate steward, a Mr Gosford, as well as a cook, a drunken gardener, three nervous ladies’ maids who had never before seen an ‘Ethiopian’, and two stable boys. It was a big house, but Bogle had walked the halls of Stowe, and felt himself to be a man who could no longer be surprised. When Mrs Doughty became gravely ill, he was not surprised – even less so when she recovered – but the Doughtys were stunned both by this visitation of ill luck and by its reprieve. Mr Doughty built a church across the road, visible from the front windows, so that Mrs Doughty might remember the grace of God from her sickbed. This reminded Bogle of Little Johanna dropping four stones in a line to ward off duppies. It did not surprise him.

  One night in August, Mr Doughty ran downstairs without a stitch on and told Bogle to get dressed and have the coach ready. Fifteen minutes later Bogle drove to Poole Harbour, as instructed, eyes half closed with sleep. On the pier, two men were bowing deeply to a third man wearing a lot of gold braid but with bucked teeth like a donkey. Tichborne seemed very agitated. His bandy legs were shaking: ‘It is the Count of Ponthieu, Bogle. Hold the door open.’ Bogle held the door. Why was everybody dressed so finely at one in the morning? He drove to Lulworth Castle, as instructed, left the men there and drove all the way back to Upton to the sound of Tichborne snoring. The next morning the whole thing had taken on the quality of a dream, although he had not slept. After dinner service he was so exhausted he could hardly balance the bottle of port on its tray. The new Mr Doughty, having slept most of the day, was full of energy, eager for company. He wanted to know what Bogle had made of the Count of Ponthieu, but Bogle didn’t really make anything of him, aside from those teeth. Mr Doughty laughed till tears came out of his eyes.

  ‘What if I told you that your “donkey-tooth” passenger was the exiled King of France!’

  He was so tired. He just nodded.

  2.

  Upton Park, Poole

  Life at Upton had a regular rhythm. It revolved around heavy meals, different beverages at different hours of the day, newspaper deliveries and daily visits to Upton’s chapel. Sometimes Bogle thought that if he had attended any church as frequently as he went to this chapel, well, then, he would have believed something quite different and perhaps even thought of ‘God’ entirely differently, like a Mohammedan or a Protestant. But he lived at Upton and went to mass, and very soon there was no other God for him than the one to whom everyone at Upton prayed. He went to chapel twice daily, and soon gained a reputation for piety, for which he was praised. From this, he gathered that prayer must be harder for others than it was for him. Nothing felt more natural than directing his thoughts to an unseen realm – or resting his tired knees in the pews. Even more obscure was the connection between this growing reputation and the fifty pounds that Doughty now informed him would be given to him per annum, for his service to the family. With as little fanfare as that, he joined the rank of paid servants.

  3.

  The Christmas Uprising, 1831

  Christmas came, smelling of raisins and sherry. Nobody danced or wore a house on their head. They sat in their chairs and cracked opened bonbons and read the little mottos inside. Christmas passed. It was another month before anyone in Upton got to hearing of the ‘Christmas Uprising’. Bogle had to paint over his yearnings for jonkonnu with a fresh portrait of slaves burning their trash houses, Maroons and militia men hunting the culprits, mass executions. His island was on fire.

  Every evening, in the newspapers, the tale of this negro uprising expanded, and Mr Doughty expressed some variation on his relief to no longer be in any way involved with the ‘cursed sugar trade’. Bogle snuck the newspaper back to his quarters after dark and read the long columns by the light of a single candle, trying to understand if only the north coast was burning and who exactly was being executed in the town squares for refusing to work. But of all the negroes in Jamaica there was only one with a name, as far as The Times was concerned – Sam Sharpe – and after a while he understood that he was only upsetting himself. What he wanted to know no English paper would ever tell him.

  * * *

  *

  In the dining room, in February, a woman in a low-cut gown shivered dramatically and put down her knife and fork: ‘Yesterday I read that the first fire was lit by a woman, and what do you think she said as she did it? I know I shall die for it, but my children shall be free. No doubt it’s sentimental of me, Edward, but I was moved.’

  Mr Doughty snorted, and accepted a fresh pouring from Bogle at his left shoulder.

  ‘Entire business is unsustainable – I knew that much the moment I stepped off the boat. We’d do well to let the whole island slip into the sea.’

  Later that night, in his bunk, Bogle closed his eyes and submitted to a sentimental vision. He put the first torch in Johanna’s hand, the words from the newspaper into her mouth, then lay back and watched the whole thing go up like a bonfire.