Free Galleon by Dudley Pope Page B

accepted that Thomas’ hateful wife in England prevented him marrying Diana.
    Would the Dons come before the church was built?
     

Chapter Four
    While Ned rode off on his horse to talk to the carpenters, masons and labourers (now starting to dig trenches for the foundations), and inspect the temporary kitchen (with its oven made out of rocks and which provided daily meals for everyone on the site), Aurelia sat alone in the shade at the edge of the cliff.
    The tamarind tree, shaped like a giant mushroom and with foliage so thick the shimmering noon sun could not penetrate, survived the perpetual buffeting of the Trade wind because it grew on the lee side of a range of hills running northwards to the sea. The hills ended abruptly at the coast in steep cliffs forming the western end of a bay and against which the northerly swells thundered even on almost windless days, sending fine spray drifting upwards in a salty mist.
    Aurelia’s tamarind – Ned and Thomas had been quick to name it as hers – was halfway along the western slope of the hills which would protect the house when completed. To windward, another range of similar hills ran parallel, plunging down to the sea to form the eastern end of the bay.
    Ned had already brought the Griffin round to the north coast and sent in a boat to survey the bay. It was deep enough for both the Griffin and Thomas’ ship; the holding ground was good and, Ned had told her, would be an excellent anchorage except during the northers of the winter, which brought rollers crashing against the cliffs with a ferocity that had frightened Aurelia the first time she saw them and helped Ned persuade her not to insist on building their house on the edge of the cliff. A constant view of the sea was splendid, Ned had agreed, but had Aurelia thought of the fine spray in the sea air? Polished silver tarnishing within hours; mildew as much of an enemy of cloth and leather as it was on board a ship. Paint would peel off window frames and shutters…the way Ned described it all, Aurelia began to think of sea air as a corrosive acid…
    She settled herself on the stool after looking carefully on the ground in case it had stirred up a nest of ants which would crawl up her own legs, seeking bare skin to bite with vicious hot-needle nips. Then she unrolled the parchment plan of the house and looked at it for the thousandth time.
    The architect must have spent as much time drawing the title of the house as the plan itself! Yorke Hall, with Plantations and Lands it said on a shield surrounded by elaborate crosshatching indicating the nearby hills and valleys. Aurelia knew there was a second parchment indicating all land, rivers and streams, the big stands of trees and where various crops would best grow. The site of a proposed sugar mill was shown beside the largest river, along with the little houses, hospital, kitchens and the water cistern for the slaves who would eventually work the plantation.
    The house seemed enormous. She looked at the plan and then the front elevation; then she shut her eyes, trying to picture the completed building. Yes, rectangular and on two floors, its roof giving it a Norman look. The front entrance – that was impressive: high double doors opened out on to a stone balcony the width of the house and wide stone staircases curved round like horns at each end.
    When she protested that visitors climbing the steps still had a long walk to the front door even when they reached the balcony, Ned’s explanation had been chillingly simple: whether they approached from left or right, they would have to pass the windows of three rooms before reaching the door. In times of danger those windows would be shuttered, and each double shutter (made of bullet wood) would have two keyhole-shaped gunloops carved in it, so twelve muskets – two for each window – could drive off any unwelcome visitors, from whichever direction they approached.
    For several days Aurelia had teased Ned over the