the whole melody an ugly buck-toothed negro at the front thrashed his tambourine as if to fright crows from a field. Yet it was a silent enough night for some, for the old negro poised upon the triangle looked to be asleep.
‘My dear, everyone knows these slave musicians play better asleep than awake,’ Elizabeth Wyndham from Prosperity had said before rolling her eyes to her husband, with no qualm that Caroline might witness the rebuke. Charles Wyndham added that, next time she needed music, to let him know and he would see to it that one of the brigade’s bands came from the nearby barrack or enquire if there were a ship in dock that could supply some excellent naval or merchant players. ‘Niggers cannot render civilised music,’ he told her.
‘Some play a wee bit by ear,’ Tam Dewar said. All spruced up, with the small amount of hair he had slicked against his head as if drawn on with a quill, the overseer had intended the comment as a comfort. However his smile, although meaning to be gracious, reminded Caroline of her grey mare when she bared her gummy, brown teeth.
‘But they do not know of sharps and flats. They are like small children in that respect,’ was Evelyn Sadler, the skinny mistress of Windsor Hall’s, pennyworth of wisdom upon the subject.
‘I’ve suffered worse,’ her husband George added. Upon which note this exchange but not the negroes’ rumpus was brought to a close. And, once the sunset had stopped eclipsing Caroline’s elaborate room decoration, all the guests agreed, as they took their seats for dinner, that the profusion of candles rendered the room quite magical . . . if not a little hot.
Godfrey clapped his hands as a signal for the food to be brought in upon the table. When none of his wretched boys appeared from the kitchen he stood within the doorway to yell like a market caller, ‘Byron, come bring the food, nah. You no hear me clap?’ Elizabeth Wyndham found this cause once more to roll her eyes. But soon all the dishes—a delicious-looking boiled turkey, a ham, a platter of plump guinea fowl, several turtles and stewed ducks, pigeon and mutton pies with pastry that appeared passable, and a vivid abundance of fruit—were laid along the table.
Henry Barrett may have leaned back upon his chair, tucked his napkin under his chin and commenced with what he considered conversation, but to all other ears was dreary sermon, ‘I suppose all of you have heard that the negroes have got it into their heads that the King has given them their freedom. Some say it spells trouble.’ Caroline’s brother John may have suggested to him that he save that thorny subject for after the ladies have left the room. And he, slurping down a whole glass of red wine, might have agreed, ‘Quite so, quite so,’ before carrying on, until only the pushing of thick slices of ham into his busy mouth gave any pause in his oration. ‘They believe it is only we planters standing in the way of them and some heaven on earth, once they are free. What do you think on this, Howarth? Those preachers have put it in their head that they are as worthy as white man. Baptists. They’re just a bunch of . . . Better not say with ladies present, eh, Howarth? I’m ready for them if there’s trouble. Good chance to put all those niggers back in their place . . .’
Molly may have slopped most of the vegetable soup over the floor as she searched the table for somewhere to rest the tureen. And Evelyn Sadler may have whispered into her husband’s ear, ‘Oh no, not turkey again.’ Yet nothing, no, nothing, nothing was going to blight that coveted evening for Caroline Mortimer. Not even George Sadler quipping to general amusement that, ‘The boy on the triangle has just woken up,’ when the old negro musician tripped over a chair as the players were commanded to leave the room.
But, reader, let us follow the fiddlers’ example and run from this place. For I fear you will never forgive your storyteller for resigning you to listen upon the puff and twaddle of such dull company. If you were to stay supping at that table you would soon feel yourself as wearisome as Caroline Mortimer’s dinner guests. Nothing was going to mar that dinner for her but, before she breaks a bite from Florence and Lucy’s crust upon