October 5, 1819
7:15 a.m.
Trafalgar, British Florida
It was nearly dawn. William Davidson had already breakfasted with his family (cornmeal, rice and yams) and was off to work. There was never a shortage of work in this town.
Well, hardly ever. Yesterday, thanks to some delays in the arrival of timber and brick, there had been barely nine hours’ worth of work to do building the port. That had given him more time to fix up the cabin. (Turning the place into a house fit for a family of seven was an ongoing project.)
Even at this early hour, the streets of Trafalgar were busy. And no wonder — most of the houses were in no better shape than Davidson’s. The streets were laid out in a sensible grid (except around the edges of town, so as not to provide a channel for hurricane winds) but were still mostly dirt, with only a few stretches of brick pavement to indicate the ambitions of Raffles and Lafon. Here and there, a big old live oak or hickory had been left standing for the sake of its shade — which was good, as this town did get dreadfully hot during the summer. Jamaica, where Davidson had been born, had been worse, but not much.
Looking across the street, Davidson saw that the city’s first Anglican church was nearly complete. Meanwhile, Trafalgar already had two Hindu temples, a mosque and something that was supposed to be a Catholic church — but from what he’d heard, a very strange one. (Skeptical about religion in general, Davidson had always thought of Catholics as more than usually superstitious, but he was fair-minded enough to acknowledge that he’d never heard of chickens or goats being sacrificed at St. Mary’s in Hampstead.)
But that was Trafalgar. In this town, the Seminole Indians from up north were already outnumbered by the Indian Indians from India. Then there were freedmen and escaped slaves from the North, Cubans, Haitians, Balinese and Jews… and even a few regular Britons.
And in another generation, not even those categories would fit everybody. Davidson knew of Provençal women, royalists from Marseilles, who had fled the restoration of Napoleon but hadn’t been able to get into Louisiana — the little republic had put limits on how many immigrants it could take in in any one year — and had ended up marrying Bengali or Keralan men. For that matter, he himself was a mulatto who had married a white widow with four children and had two children of his own by her. This was one of the very few places on this earth where a family like his wouldn’t be looked askance at… very often.
Davidson crossed the central boulevard, where the virgin forest between the two lanes had been left untouched (if you wanted a tree-lined avenue, that was about the easiest way in the world to get it) and found himself in a market where little trees were being sold. Tenant farmers, still trying to earn their way out of debt, were preparing orchards to grow oranges and lemons and limes and something called “lychees” — orchards that would stat bearing fruit some time in the next decade. This was a hopeful place.
The piers were always crowded, with everything from little boats from Angola[1], Bombay and Nyepore[2], to Royal Navy gunboats getting ready to hunt for slave ships. And, of course, the freighters bringing in the supplies the colony needed and taking out the bags of rice that were all it had to offer by way of export… at the moment.
Finally, he arrived at the unfinished East Pier Four. Only a few of his crew had made it here before him. The piles had been coated with tar and driven into place, and half the crosspieces were in place as well. The rest of the lumber had arrived last night. Now it was just a matter of carpentry. Lots and lots of carpentry.
* * *
1:30 p.m.
When the job was simple enough that everyone knew what needed doing, there was no excuse for the foreman not to get in there and swing a hammer with the rest. Davidson was so busy driving the last nail into place that he didn’t realize it
was the last nail until he heard the cheering of his men behind him.
It was too early in the day for rum, so he treated his crew to a round of
choo[3] at a Bengali tavern. On the way home to give his wife the rest of his pay, he stopped at the market and picked up a celebratory bottle of white Yadkin.
“How’d you get this wine so cheap?” said Davidson. Tariffs on American products were rather high.
“Ask me no questions, I tells you no lies,” said the wine-seller cheerfully.
Which was why Davidson was walking down the street with a bottle of contraband wine when the governor’s messenger caught up with him. Fortunately, life had taught him the art of appearing innocent.
* * *
2:30 p.m.
Davidson had never met Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles. The governor was a clever-faced man in his late thirties. He looked over his steepled fingers, examining Davidson with no apparent sign of prejudice (although as Davidson well knew, there weren’t always apparent signs.)
“I received your application,” said Raffles. “The son of a colonial attorney general, educated in law and mathematics… your credentials are excellent. How it is you come to work as a common labourer?”
“I took the work I found, governor,” said Davidson. “This city needs workers more than it needs clerks or lawyers.” He hoped Raffles hadn’t inquired into his past too closely.
“I do have a clerical position in mind for you,” said Raffles, “but it may include more… adventurous duties as well. Mr. Davidson, how would you like to make this colony more secure, while at the same time working towards the freedom of your brothers and sisters?”[4]
[1] A community of Seminoles and escaped slaves in the Tampa Bay area (or the Hillsborough Bay area ITTL). IOTL, it was destroyed by a Coweta Creek war party in April of 1821 on the orders of Gen. Andrew Jackson. It was destroyed so thoroughly, in fact, that to this day archaeologists can’t pin down exactly where it was beyond “somewhere on the Manatee River.”
[2] OTL St. Petersburg and Riviera Bay.
[3] An alcoholic beverage brewed from rice.
[4] IOTL, William Davidson stayed in Great Britain, fell in with
the wrong crowd and came to a bad end.
Any idea what Hungerford died of?