The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  The laugh was harsh and short.

  “Lieutenant Kaye has his own reasons, I believe, although I know them not. She’s not a King’s ship, though, she’s under charter from her owner for a fee, he sails on board as master, and has last say in many things, including cleanliness and fizz. John Gunning’s not a very cleanly man.”

  William was mystified and showed it, but Samuel took it very easily.

  “It’s not unusual in these days,” he said. “Wars cost money so we’re told, and ships to build cost hundreds, even thousands. So Mr Gunning gets his charter rent, the Navy gets his seamen for a crew — with the best protection from the Press that any man could have! — and the Biter has a navigator and a pilot all in one, which is fortunate with Richard Kaye as captain of her, for he could not navigate a paper hat across a puddle in the sun. So everyone is satisfied — save us!”

  William said, awkwardly: “There is some honour in it, surely? You make it sound… well, we are at war, and the Press is very necessary, or there would be no men in our ships, no men at all. And there are legal ties, and rules, and so on. You’re not suggesting…?”

  “I’m not suggesting nothing,” riposted Holt. “Aye, sure it’s legal, they taught us that in black and white at Christ’s; and the moral side. We rehearsed the moral side till our tongues clove to our mouths, although my father, rest his soul, would not agree, I’ll warrant me. Nay, the service has its good points, so does bold Cap’n Kaye, come to that. Between him and John Gunning we spend a lot of time in Deptford, is one for instance, and we spend a lot of time on shore. Lieutenant Kaye’s a great stickler for liberty, at least of that sort, and if you don’t believe in pressing centum per cent, then he’s your man, as the Irish say, for he has the air of a fellow with better things by far to do, especially if drink and whores are in the question. That’s where he will be now, our good commander, you might depend upon it. We’ll get to the ship as ordered, foot-sore and arse-weary, and Slack Dickie will be stuck in some neat strumpet, lucky bastard. Don’t call him that to face, by the way, he wouldn’t catch the joke. But as I told you, he has his good sides, don’t you see!”

  A vision of Deb’s face, exhausted, bruised, exquisite, arose behind Will’s eyes, sudden and unbidden. He forced himself to moral things again.

  “Your father,” he asked, awkwardly. “Why would he not agree about the Impress Service, that it is just? Was he a victim of it?”

  For a while there was no reply. Just the sound of horses’ hooves on mud and stone, the creak of leather. Holt sighed.

  “He was a lawyer. He went to Virginia, among other reasons, because of a spirit who had preyed on villages around where I was born and raised. That is, near Lewes, you may have heard of it. He had a strange belief the law could help wronged people. His passage out — theirs, he would not leave my mother and the littles — their passages were paid by subscription, the families of wronged parties, friends, well-wishers. Who knows, if he had lived…”

  “A spirit? I have heard of Lewes, but forgive me. You do not mean a ghost?”

  “Hell, William, I am the bumpkin, not you, man! Nay, I mean a rogue who kidnaps poor sufferers and sells them to the colonies as slaves. Indentured servants, Seven-Year Passengers, you must have ’em down in Hampshire, surely? This man, this agent, as he styled himself so grand, scoured the land around Lewes for two years till he was murdered by a man whose sons had been taken and despatched on transports. The man was hanged, of course, but my father was approached by many other families and resolved to go to the Colonies himself to try for rescues or releases of the victims he could prove coerced by fraud or violence. Those who answered the handbill and the advertisements of their own volition — well, naturally he held out little hope for them. You Hampshire people have a song for us Sussex men, I know, iyour country clods don’t get spirited, perhaps it’s right and we are stupid, after all.”

  Will did not suppose it, so he merely smiled. Too tedious to tell of the isolated, simple life he led much of the time, so little knowing of the world at large.

  “I thought the slaves were black,” he merely said. “Except the odd convict, naturally. Negers out of Africa.”

  “Aye, Negroe or Irish mainly, although to be an orphan in the port of Liverpool, or Bristol, so I’m told, is a very dangerous thing, an orphan or a bastard or a whore without protection. Our spirit, the one who had his throat cut in Hailsham High Street and my father and my family died for, had a special trick of relieving henpecked husbands of their shrewish wives, or disappearing drunkards and other feckless fellows who had outstayed their welcome in the marriage bed. But mainly innocents. The young and silly and the poor and weak. Poor father would have relished saving them. He was a man for moral things.”

  The moon was gone, but up ahead of them something was glittering, not constantly but there. Inn lights, maybe, or houses through the trees.

  “What o’clock do you suppose it is?” asked Holt. “You do not have a timepiece, do you? I wonder, if Richard Kaye is not on board, if we would be, in fact, too late ourselves.” He grinned. “I mean the gay house,” he said. “Your old friend Dr Marigold! Could you stand a little whoring, after all?”

  “God, Sam!” said William, covered in confusion. “God, Sam, you are an odd fish! You talk of morals, your father righting wrongs, and then you talk of whoring in one breath! But truly, I know nothing of that pastime, nothing.”

  “What of that maid, then?” Samuel mocked. “The one you glued to on your horse and couldn’t take your eyes off, hot as coals? Deb, was it? There are better whores than Deb at Dr Marigold’s!”

  “There you are!” cried William. “First moral talk, then you debase that poor child, you slander her on no excuse at all! You are a cynic after all! Why call her a whore? What of poor Cecily, who has lost her teeth? Is she a whore?”

  Sam Holt was not all hard-case sailor man. His cynicism might run deep enough, but he recognised Will’s hurt and hurtability, and reined back his exuberance. While marvelling at a Navy officer so naive about so prime a Navy interest.

  “William,” he said. “Don’t take on so, it’s only half in jest. Look, man, the flesh and pleasure are not problems, we must take pleasure where we can, and when. It’s like sleep to seamen, is it not — we must snatch a half a second, however hard the weather, or we’d never sleep. So Cec is not a whore, or if she is, a most unusual one to sell her teeth for five pound once, and not her body, which is a time and time again commodity. How long will five pound last, think you?”

  William felt sick at heart. Better, surely, to have sold her body.

  “Five pounds?” It came out faintly. Samuel shrugged.

  “A guess. Five for her, more for the mountebank, perhaps? More than she would have got him as a toy among the ruffians that we were threatened with. Or perhaps he is a spirit, also. Perhaps the alternative he offered was a cruise to Maryland or Massachusetts. He would sell her, and Deb as well presumably, to the captain of a transport, who would sell them on for servitude or slavery when they reached the Colonies. They realise now, I warrant, they’d have been better stuck in Stockport, making hats.”

  Will said nothing. The beauty of Deb, in his memory, was faded. His back ached, his behind and legs ached, in his heart just dull regret for both the maids.

  “I don’t mean Deb’s a whore, or Cecily, but if they have to be, what of it, it’s the times,” said Sam Holt, quietly. “They are maidens, women, just human creatures like ourselves, who must eat or die. What were they doing with the mountebank? How desperate must you be to sell your teeth, how desperate to track down two hundred miles or three to earn a living? A living, Will, think of the word, think what it means, a living. How much do you have in a year? Thirty? Fifty? And the chance to earn some more, even the chance of prizes, although hardly in the Impress Service, but bounties do accrue if Kaye can be rousted into action. Deb and Cecily, even as whores, even with a full set of ivories — ”

  “Sam,” said Will. “Enough, I beg of y
ou. Enough.” Mrs Houghton had said they’d left the north to seek adventure, had run away from dull routine. But every awful thing that Sam predicted for them must now be right. Except — Sir Arthur Fisher would look after them. He had forgotten that.

  Sam agreed, when he put this to him. Smiling, he agreed the maids were saved. But he still insisted (“I am a pedant, and a pedagogue!”) that his friend should face the “fine philosophy of the whole affair, and grasp it.” Which meant, it seemed,, that Will must sleep with Deborah.

  “You will allow,” he told his silent companion, “that to lie with a girl like that, for her to sell her body, might be quite wonderful, but would in no wise be important. We cannot marry whom we please, can we, but we have to do the other thing; you have to, William, you’re a human, you’re a man. And such girls, what do they do, such girls as Deb and Cecily? Their aim is not end up in the gutter if they can, but to marry someone rich and powerful, to marry or become the plaything, mistress, concubine, and it can happen, if they have the brains and beauty and the luck. But most of them, they do end in the gutter, don’t they? If you lie with Deb, and give her money, you ward off that evil day, you leave her with her chances open, well fed, well dressed, with prospects. It is your duty, man, your duty. To keep her from the gutter!”

  No need for answer. Sam, once more, had made himself content by flight of fancy, then moved on merrily. William, slightly ashamed, caught himself in the thought that Deborah was safe at Sir Arthur Fisher’s house, and he and Sam had horses that might be returned there, if the time allowed. With the thought a quick remembrance of those eyes, that hair, that face, despite the knowledge that she meant nothing to him, absolutely nothing, and he much less to her, it was all a dream. To Cecily, poor Cec, he apportioned not a thought. Deborah was safe.

  Later that night, though, in the pitch-black early hours, Deb left her warm, soft bed with Cecily, still drunk with brandy, still bleeding, still in pain, and crept down through the servants’ rooms and out into the dim back yard. Deb had noted earlier where the nearest dogs were, and where the animals, and where the stables, and where she might find an ass or a mule. The run was not an easy one, nor was it particularly hard, although poor Cecily could only stumble clumsily, letting out small cries when jogged. Deb had run before, especially in the last two months, not always with the mountebank directing. Her latest run had been that day, while Cec had screamed and weltered with his cruel hands in her mouth, and Milady had lain silent, whitefaced and stoical, waiting for the plugging in of her new teeth. Deb, almost as drunk as Cecily, had known then that she’d never do it, no, not even for a thousand pounds, and seized an opportunity amid the blood and shrieking to slip out and get away. Not far and not for long. Dennett knew he would find her, that she could not leave her friend despite this small betrayal, and he was right. But Deborah could run with Cecily. They were getting good at it.

  Perhaps outside the park, both knew, the mountebank was lurking. Perhaps he’d gathered men to hunt them down, perhaps this run would be a short one, not a great escape. But Deb was eaten up with shame at her abandonment, and she had a great determination. After half an hour, with Cecily on the ass and her ahead, they were a mile away at least, heading north, sometimes on the road, more often near the edge of cover. They had liked Sir Arthur’s house, and his kindness, and Mrs Houghton and her girls and men. But the magistrate had paid for more than he had got, and Marcus Dennett would be made to suffer surely, if Deb’s teeth should be needed and could not be had. In any way, Dennett would say he owned them, they were his, and he would have somehow come to the great house and got them, by force or trickery, there was no doubt of that.

  At least the night was dry by now, and still quite warm. In London they could truly disappear.

  FIVE

  Charles Yorke was still alive, just, but he thought his friend was dead. They were lying in a stinking brewhouse outside another inn, in Hampshire still as he imagined it, but perhaps in Dorset or in Sussex for all he really knew. They had travelled long in the night, although they might not have travelled far. There had been much stopping, much gathering of drunken men to beat and gawp, much ill-treatment at many hands. At each stop they had been misused and then abandoned in a corner while more drinking had gone on, and each time they had hoped to meet the men they were intended for at last.

  It had not happened, though, and they had got weaker as the night wore on. Yorke had lost consciousness from time to time, while the older man had lapsed for longer periods, which filled Yorke with despair. After his first long hanging upside down, beneath the horse’s belly, his tormentors had not allowed a repetition, which argued that they did not want him dead. Charles Yorke, in fact, had thought him so the first time they had righted him, so drenched in blood was he. His face, wiped down, was cut and bruised beyond recognition by the horse’s hooves. He had teeth missing and one eye closed entirely. Oh God, thought Yorke; that we should have come to this.

  At one halt, tethered to a post beside a stream while the drinkers went off for some more refreshment, they had found themselves half capable of speech. For moments, they had leaned against each other, both panting as if they had run, not ridden. They had had new beatings, although not full-hearted ones, which acted — Yorke had noticed this before — as a kind of stimulator, strange to tell. But the men had moved away for further cannikins minutes ago.

  “Charles?” Charles Yorke was tentative. His friend was desperately low. For moments there was no response. “Charles, how do you?”

  “You do not need to ask,” Warren said, eventually. It was an attempt at jocularity, but Yorke was too tired to be moved. The older man’s breath came uneven, with a rasp behind it. They were touching. That was the only comfort.

  “Do you think they mean to kill us?” Yorke said. “It is hours now. I thought to have been presented to the venturers. This round is endless, it does not have a purpose or a point that I can see.”

  In the silence, each noise extraneous was made larger and discrete. Across the yard a horse moved its feet on stone, then there came the uneven spatter as it dropped fresh turds. After that a sighing, a kind of yawn, then the high scream of a vixen. In the silence after that sound a dog barked half a mile away, a heavy, thudding bark. A burst of laughter from inside the house. Then a gentle breath of wind, that brought the fresh manure smell to them, sweetly familiar, unendurable.

  “Oh God,” said Warren, “we are doomed to die this night, I think. This is a progress, a triumphal round to show us off, and put some mettle in the Hampshire and West Sussex men. We are not intended for the venturers, I guess. They have proposed, their people will dispose of us. It is to warn the fainthearts, and a celebration, both.”

  Charles Yorke considered this. They had been betrayed, no doubt of that sad fact. But surely they would not just be paraded, done to death, without some questioning? Good God, he thought, we could be innocent! He caught the thought, and was amazed by it, and sourly amused. They could be innocent, but they were not. If they were to be destroyed as spies against the new free traders, who sought to bring harsh Kentish ways into this local scene — then so they were.

  They did meet more important men, however, in the end — not after that halt, nor the next one, or the next — but by this time Warren was too far gone to be worth questioning, and Yorke was not much better. They saw the men at a manor farmhouse, not a country tavern, and the rowdies stayed outside. They were pushed, half carried in the case of Warren, into a fine large kitchen, where two gentlemen — in looks at least — were seated at a long scrubbed table. Warren, released, dropped to the flags in silence, hitting his head against the table with a bang. That, for Yorke, was sufficient. His only thoughts were hatred and revenge, if thoughts they counted as. He was rational enough, certainly, to stare at the faces opposite, burning them on his mind and eyeballs. It was said that a murdered person’s eyes retained a picture of the perpetrators, although he hardly thought it to be true. In case it was, he stared. Perhaps he would survi
ve, in any case. If so, these men would be remembered though he lived to see a hundred.

  One was fattish, one was thin, one wore a fullish wig, the other man was bald. The thin one had a glinting greyness in the eyes, which caught the candle-flare, the fat one had had the smallpox bad, and bore the pits and scars. The fat one had on a stretched waistcoat of dull stuff, enlivened by a silver chain that would have tethered a treasure ship so enormous were its links. He took snuff. His chin was stained, his nostrils reddened. He must use it constantly.

  Indeed, before either of them spoke, his two fat fingers snaked into his fob, returning with a box of figured silver, which he opened with dexterity, tapped, and penetrated. Then a double snort, the box instantly disappearing, and a large lawn handkerchief smothered his nostrils with a flourish. Yorke watched and waited, eyes like gimlets. He tried to meet the thin man’s gaze, to crush him with the weight of hatred, but the thin man knew, and kept his eyes averted. The fat one, nose well-polished, was the first to speak. His voice, like his form, was large and strangely comfortable.

  “My friends,” he said. “How good of you both to take the trouble. Had you let us know in advance, we would have prepared some sweetmeats.”

  This was mere unpleasantness, so Yorke ignored it. The thin man made a gesture of impatience.

  “No, all jollity aside,” went on the fat. “You have put yourselves through much to be here with us. We understand from our friend in Fareham that you have proposals. He talked of cash to sink. He talked of business. So tell us — what have you in your minds?”

  For one wild, mad moment, Charles Yorke had a rush of hope. Maybe they did not know, maybe this ill-treatment was a… was a what? Warren lay in front of him, unconscious and grey-faced. This devil was just playing, for his sport. However:

  “You think in some wise we are what we are not,” he said. It came out thickly, his lips were suffused with blood. “I guess you think that we are agents of the Crown, but I promise you, we are in the business like yourselves. If Mr Felton told you otherwise, he made a grave mistake. We are honest like yourselves, which is to say… that some… might call us… rogues.”