Finally, I walk out the bedroom, close the door softly behind me. Walk back cross the dining room floor, pick up a silver spoon from the table, hide it in me belt. Walk past the clock in the parlour till I reach the front door and open it. Look at the rebels waiting, eyes alert, ready for action. Then I beckon to them.

‘Come in,’ I say. ‘Come in, me friends. Take what you want and make this place you own.’

On the first few days things go our way.

We strike like lightning, travel from plantation to plantation, gathering up the slaves willing to fight for freedom. The slaves that still want to follow in Busha footsteps, we lock them up in slave huts, let them out after most of us gone. We take every stick of furniture, clothes, cutlery, pretty plate and glass them out of the Great Houses, then set fire to them houses. Watch as the smoke billow and the flames of the red-hot fire rise up to devour them. Turn the sun blood-red, to match the passion in our hearts.

We of one mind, one will. Sam Sharpe will.

But some of the slaves, they don’t wait for the signals. Don’t fall in line behind our leaders, Dove, Johnson and Gardiner, when they relay the messages as to what going happen next. A few of the rebels make them own plans. Don’t listen. For some is not bout fighting for freedom, for justice. For some is just bout payback. Use the fighting to take revenge on the ones that done them wrong. But revenge make them hot-headed, careless. Come out into the open when them should stay hidden. Be late when them should be early. And when it come down to it, them don’t stand and fight. Instead them run.

And we drink the rum of victory, not knowing we betrayed by our own kind. The slaves that still think freedom going descend from the heavens, when backra heart get ploughed under with kindness. Them run to backra. Run like a dog when the massa whistle. Confess! Give all the details bout the plan. They live in a dream world, what fools. But so is we, because we think the ships in the dock bringing black sand to use in our guns and the king already sign the freedom papers. But the ship full of soldiers sent to fight us and the king, him gave no such freedom.

For some of us, it make no difference. We going continue to hold steady, to fight. Listen for the signals coming down the line, even though the scent of death lingering round us and the cries of wounded brothers left behind still ringing in our ears.