Nicholas Whittington murmured his assent, and others concurred.
"As you say, gentlemen. But you've got three more Dutch slavers due within a fortnight. I understand they're supposed to be shipping Barbados a full three thousand this year alone." Bedford looked about the room with a concerned expression. "That'll be just a start, if sugar production expands the way it seems it will. It might be well if we had the Assembly pass Acts for ordering and governing these slaves."
"Damn your Assembly. We already have laws for property on Barbados."
Again the other planters voiced their agreement. Bedford stood listening, then lifted his hand for quiet. Katherine found herself wishing he would be as blunt with them as Winston had been. Sometimes the governor's good manners got in the way, something that hardly seemed to trouble Hugh Winston.
"I tell you this is no light matter. No man in this room knows how to manage all these Africans. What Englishman has ever been responsible for twenty, thirty, nay perhaps even a hundred slaves? They've to be clothed in some manner, fed, paired for offspring. And religion, sir? Some of the Quakers we've let settle in Bridgetown are already starting to say your blacks should be baptized and taught Christianity."
"You can't be suggesting it? If we let them be made Christians, where would it end?" Briggs examined him in disbelief. "You'd have laws, sir, Acts of your Assembly. Well there's the place to start. I hold the first law should be to fine and set in the stocks any of these so-called Quakers caught trying to teach our blacks Christianity. We'll not stand for it."
Katherine saw Serina's features tense and her eyes harden, but she said nothing, merely continued to skim the foam from the boiling surface of the cauldron.
"The Spaniards and Portugals teach the Catholic faith to their Negroes," Bedford continued evenly.
"And there you have the difference. They're not English. They're Papists." Briggs paused as he studied the flow of cane sap entering the cauldron from the holding tank, still dripping slowly from the lead spout. "By the looks of it, it could be flowing faster." He studied it a moment longer, then turned toward the door. "The mill. Maybe that's the answer. What if we doubled the size of the cane bundles?"
Katherine watched the planters trail after Briggs, out the doorway and into the night, still passing the flask of kill-devil.