by Jan Needle
Sir Peter’s mind then wandered off, as it was prone to, to the body of his wife Laetitia, and who was using it. His office window overlooked the Thames, which was dull and busy, a bass note to the drabness of his mood. Impatiently, he clawed back to the subject at his hand, shouting to his clerk to come in and take a letter down that instant. A senior man in Hampshire had suggested that a woman called Ma Foster, a denizen of Liberty Wood, near the hamlet of World’s End, might know something, and might be persuadable to tell. Trouble was, she was old and stubborn, the recipient of all sorts of confidences from the local free trade men, for whom she ran a browning factory, known about but not closed down because it was a rendezvous and information source. This senior suggested Adam Price to do the job, because he was held to be more heartless than the generality, and Ma Foster was as tight as any grave. To his annoyance, Sir Peter Maybold had been left to make the last decision, and now he made it. The woman had lived comfortable in illegality for long enough. She would speak, or they would shut her factory down.
Price, a small sly man with a taste for cruelty, had been escorted to the factory by two riding officers, in case the crone had menfolk at her beck. She did not, but the trip was disappointment from the first, and failed. She saw them coming from the forest edge, as she had been forewarned. It was known by all the free trade men by now who Yorke and Warren were, and what had been their fate. Cruel though Prices reputation was, Ma Foster had been told what crueller men would do to her if she should speak too much. Reluctantly — for she thought herself a match for a collector and two riding men — she abandoned her cott and slipped into the Liberty, to watch.
The house — a hovel rather, with turfed-over roof — was empty, naturally. Inside it Adam Price found a pile of skins and rags (her bed), a wooden table, a stool, a water jug. In the shed next door, much better made of planks and thatching, he expected much more, and knew she’d tricked him. At the stone-clad hearth, where Ma Foster burnt the sugar to colour the natural spirit brought in from France at a dozen spots along the coast, there were no pans, measures, tundishes, anything to ply her trade. Similarly, the storage room was empty, not a barrel or a hogshead or a half-cask to be seen. No sugar, either, except in smears across the beat-earth floor. Ma Foster and her customers had thought ahead, and they’d acted. It was not a browning factory, it was a woodland hut.
“Outside,” he ordered tersely, to the riding officers. “They can’t have got it far into the wood. We’ll find it if we have to work all day.”
Beside his saddle, Price had lashed a sledgehammer and some crows, to smash the cooperage and the instruments the old dame would need for browning. There being none, he smashed her door and table, then, as an afterthought, scattered hot ashes from her fire into her bedding pile. Then he blew a brand until it was ready to ignite, gathered a handful of dry grass from beside the doorway, and took it into the factory/storehouse where he piled the combustibles against the inside wooden wall. Lacking spirit by the hogshead, he returned to his saddlebag and got a bottle of his own — also smuggled, but confiscated almost legally — which he splashed freely down the rough wood of the wall. He blew the brand until the smoulder became a glow, then held the grass to it until it took. Then, with a flash, the spirit flickered blue upon the wall, taking hold as real, red fire in the cracks and fissures. Price propped open the door to give it air, and watched the fire roaring up the inner wall. By the time his men returned half an hour later, there was nothing left but blackened stumps of planking, and a pile of turf where the hovel roof was in.
The officers, who did not know the Liberty, had discovered absolutely nothing. Neither they nor Adam Price had any interest left, were hardly even amused by what Ma Foster would discover when she came back to her home. As Price had brought the only bottle, and wasted it as kindling, they needed, anyway, to find themselves an inn or tavern. Price, who had done the hot work, favoured ale.
Ma Foster, who had watched it all from start to end, cursed them mildly as they rode away, and wondered idly if she could perhaps doctor some brandy up for them, and get her fellows to leave it outside the Custom House to be found and drunk, bringing on a slow, unpleasant death. Doubting it, she went to see if she could salvage any turf from her ruined hovel. She would need to build somewhere to sleep, as the nights were getting chilly.
It was two days later that the boy found Charlie Warren, on the day, by chance, that Sir Peter Maybold received the senior man’s report from Hampshire that the best efforts of even Adam Price had turned up nothing in the Liberty. The boy was called Joe Simple, and he was thought to be a kind of idiot, from which the name. He belonged to a small tied farmer, who tended a straggle of poor fields that stretched north to south beside a Sussex wood. Joe Simple had been found, not born, but he ate little and his stupidity was not harmful. He had seen the burnt-out hayrick several times, and had even mentioned it to his father, although he did not talk much, in the way of things. Ricks did get burnt sometimes, usually for drunken reasons not malicious, often by drunk wanderers who’d come by some tobacco, so it was not interesting. This day Joe walked close, and smelled a smell he only recognised the half of. Burnt meat, yes, but also putrefaction. Burnt meat? In a hayrick? Perhaps some tramp had smoked himself to death.
So it seemed, when he got closer. The rick was quite burnt down, consisting of a shapeless low pile of black, with one side pulled out and scattered by dogs or foxes, or perhaps vicious brocks, that he had heard men talk of over beer, and which he feared. Certainly he saw a burnt-out boot, with a whitish leg bone sticking out of it into the charry mess. Above the bone a fatter-looking lump, with cloth burned into it, and rags of flesh teased down. This was the part that smelled, and the smell grew stronger when Joe poked at it with his hazel. Soft and hard, some flesh charred, some yielding, almost liquid. He knocked the hay-ash off, uncovering the area of the private parts, nothing natural to be seen there, though. The man had had a leather belt, with a good-sized buckle, which Joe Simple was hoping suddenly might be of silver. Whether of good metal or not, it occurred to him this was no tramp, there were remnants of real cloth there as well, and a waistcoat. It further fell into him that this man was buried in the hayrick, he must have thrust himself deep in its heart before he lit his pipe, which was very thoughtless, not to say — Joe held the thought, a sick feeling creeping over him. This man had been thrust in the hay and murdered by the fire.
Joe Simple stood for some long time before he moved, pondering on what he ought to do. Most likely, if he told people he’d found a murdered man, they would hang him as the murderer. They might ask him first if he had done it, because he was liked well enough, but he knew he would not have the proper words to explain himself. Someone would ask awkward questions, or be tricky with their speed, and he would confess to some guilt and be strung up from the local gibbet. He had seen it done before, and not just once, despite they lived way out of any fair-sized town. The English were a hanging race, his mother said, and who could disagree? Joe thought of this until his mind was flooded with it, which by next day meant that he was gibbering, until his father knocked him over with a lath. It took a kicking to get the whole tale out of him, when to his surprise he was not blamed at all, but told to lead the way. They uncovered the full sad stiffened effigy, which made him cry, but which his father seemed to find not unexpected. Then he was cuffed some more, to make him keep his mouth shut, and the corpse was loosely covered up for time to think.
Later that night he heard his mother and his father talking long and low, and later still two men — he thought, he did not see — came to the house for conference. Joe Simple heard nothing more of the matter after that, and in several days forgot it, almost. Except the black stick bones and purple, bitten bits of stomach that he’d seen and smelt. They stayed with him and never went away.
When dawn came to the Biter, the wind was fierce and bleak. Clear of the Essex coast and blowing truer, it had veered more northerly so their easy reach had given way to a bitter, lumpy plu
g. Through the dark hours, Gunning had snugged her down to head and close-reefed topsails, and as the east sky lightened there was little reason to increase her speed. There were ships aplenty up ahead of them, mostly hove to in the offing, some bearing off to make the estuary in time to catch the flood, but none of them was large or had the air of a foreign trader, homeward bound.
Sam and Will, on deck alone of all the Navy men, both strained their eyes to equal glum effect.
“Can he have slipped us?” Samuel mused. “But only if he’d charged by with all sail set.”
“And if he did,” said Will, “he’s likely at the bottom with the ships he hit!”
They both stared harder, up ahead and over the larboard bow. Gunning, they saw, had a spyglass, but Lieutenant Kaye was still below. Awaiting the call, or taking breakfast with his little toy, or maybe still asleep. Will had a flash of anger at Slack Dickie, irrational but sharp. How could his uncle put faith for the future in such a jackanapes?
“No,” said Sam, finally. “She must be farther off. Oh Christ, it is a mean way to make a living, this. I wonder how far those men have come, just to be met by us? I should rather that we missed them, Will. Oh look, there’s Eaton, to pipe the hands to breakfast.”
The hands were as slack as their commander, although they had had naught but beer to drink the night before, and after breakfast Sam Holt made them work at musket drill and sword practice, to put some fire in their looks. Several were seasick, which Will saw as peculiar, although the leaden motion of the old coal ship did not a lot of good to his greasy breakfast, either. He sailed his yawl in any weather, nearly, and his guts were like cast iron in a lively sea, but liveliness was not in Biter’s soul. It was with great relief three hours later that he heard the masthead shriek, and guessed that they, at last, had raised their quarry.
To his surprise it was a Navy man and not one of Biter s private people who had done the sighting. Stranger still, he found, was their reaction. Every man jack, from the captain down, seemed stirred by it, and men he had put down as lazy unto death sprang into the shrouds and climbed like squirrels to get a view. Kaye threw his head back, on the quarterdeck, and roared up to the lookout like a veritable deep-sea captain.
“Good man, good man, but where away! What ship is she, does she carry royals?”
It was the size and sort of ship that he wanted an answer on, for mostly from the north came colliers and coasting trade. Sam had already guessed the night before that Kaye’s target might have come round the British islands north-about to try and avoid something, most probably the Press. In the southern west approaches, from the Scillies outwards, the tenders hovered almost constantly. His information must have come originally from a northern sighting by a fast ship that had come to shore.
“Aye, she is big, sir,” came the reply from high aloft, then other voices joined in a chorus of happy speculation. Will watched Tom Tilley, a man who never smiled, hang on a backstay like a gigantic inflated sheeptick, whooping and huzzahing as if someone had made him rich. Even John Behar, his long bones folded across the fore topsail yard, had lost his expression of sly affrontedness.
“Blood,” said Will, “it is like a carnival. I’ve never seen men change so much.”
Gunning had joined Lieutenant Kaye on the weather side, and both were animated as they talked and pointed. Then Kaye waved a hand at them, imperiously, and they went across. His soft face was beaming.
“Well, Mr Holt, well, Mr Bentley! There’s a sight indeed, and now we’ll see some hot work at last. Have them recheck all primings and put their swords to hand, then break out a puncheon from the liquor store and give them rum or brandy, whichever comes to hand. Mr Gunning here says an hour, and I want them keen, not drunk, so see to it!”
“If you get your monkeys down off my yards,” said Gunning drily, “I’ll shake out them reefs. If not it will be longer, or she’ll scoot by us on the run.”
“Aye, see to that, an’ all,” said Kaye. “Bob! Come here, black villain! I want a bottle of madeira, and some cake! Holt! Bentley! Skip to it!”
“He’s like a bloody potentate,” Sam muttered, as the two of them went about their business and Gunning returned to the con to give his sailing orders. “No, he’s like a bloody pirate captain, he gets them fuddled before they do the work and treats them like mere scum, not his only brain. Hey!” he yelled at the red-headed boatswain’s mate. “Get those men out of Gunning’s way and down on deck and ready. Brandy is the magic word. There’ll be an issue.”
With more canvas set and drawing, the Biter lost her lumpen attitude, which eased the sickness on the decks. She became wetter as she thumped the short steep seas, but the joviality, helped on by fiery liquor, diminished not a whit. Piratical was the word Sam used, with accuracy, Will thought. As they clawed up to the unsuspecting merchantman, both ship and people had a predatory air, while Kaye stood on the quarterdeck in a watchcoat drinking madeira from a bottle that poor Black Bob kept balanced on a silver tray. Balanced expertly, it must be said, for he rode the motion like a natural sailorman.
“This is unexpected,” Will told Sam. “I knew they liked a fight when we went on the press ashore, but they seem positively bloodthirsty today. The plan is, though, to catch men, is it not, not kill them?”
“Aye, more than that, to make them volunteer,” Sam laughed. “But either way, our lads get some tidy cash per head, and all the fun of breaking them to boot. This vessel by the look of her has been at sea a fair long time. Homeward-bound seamen would almost rather die, some of them, than get thrown in the Navy, however big the bribe. Our boys like a rumpus, as you know. This bids fair to be more like a bloody battle, but without the blade or bullet. You see the fun of it? To fight the French is handsome, but you can always catch a belly-opener. This way you can split heads, take a broken nose maybe, then clap the enemy in irons down below to show who’s master, and get paid a bonus for pot luck! That’s why they’re smiling in their brandy, friend.”
At some stage indefinable, the quarry must have realised what kind of ship the Biter was, or suspected her enough to want to sheer away. Although well canvased, she had not been hard-pressed as if racing for the tide. But when she showed more canvas, and trimmed in the rest to push her up to speed, they saw something that explained her slowness. As she eased round a point or so, another vessel detached itself from where it had been obscured from their view, and moved off from the quarry on divergent course. She was a small black lugger, only forty foot or so, with high sides like a West Country fisherman. She was not, though; not a bit of it.
“My Christ,” said Samuel, “these boys get everywhere, don’t they? Kaye will fear they’ve made away with all his bribes!”
The smuggler unbrailed as she dropped away, and soon was swooping down towards the Kentish coast at a considerable lick, pulling a creamy sternwave two feet high. Will watched almost enviously, so lovely did she look, although Kaye was visibly enraged.
“He’d take a shot at her if he knew he wouldn’t fall a half-mile short,” said Sam. “God, but they’ve got fine nerve round here, haven’t they?”
“But what’s the odds to Kaye?” asked William. “So Parliament loses a bit of revenue, but he shouldn’t give a fig for that, surely? He’s rich as Croesus, and smugglers aren’t his job, he’s told us that in no uncertain terms.”
“Aye, true. It’s they will have given us away as presters, though, which extra time could make it hotter for us. Some ships take it very hard, you know. We do get fired on at times.”
“What, fired on with… You mean they’ll fight?”
Sam laughed.
“With guns, Will, aye! Not with peashooters or catapults! This ship’s come from halfway round the world, maybe, and ships like that go armed. Some captains and some crews don’t take kindly to being received by dogs like us who only want to send them out to sea once more. They want the land to walk on, not deck planks, and breasts and bellies underneath them instead of hammocks! You’d fight us, wouldn’
t you? I would!”
The sad truth, though, was different. When Gunning eased Biter off the wind a mile below them, so that whichever way she steered she could not slip past, the quarry tried no avoiding action nor did her people make a move for any of her guns. Biter did not make a stopping signal, but broke out her colours which was message clear enough. The number of men on the victim’s deck was sparse, but after a short while they manned the bunts and clewlines and reduced the working canvas. Then, ponderously, the ship hove to. Kaye eyed her through a spyglass, then told his two midshipmen, whom he had summoned to his side, that she was named the Katharine, and that all three of them would go on board.
As Gunning’s people brought her round and hove her to, the Biter’s Navy men were almost baying. They shortened up the bowropes of the towing boats, jumping down into them to bail them out and unlash the oars and ship the rudders. Gunning lay half a mile off the Katharine, right downwind in case they had a thought of going for a run, but when the boats were crewed the gap had shortened comfortably. It was not a big sea running despite the briskness of the breeze, so the people discarded their canvas frocks to free them for a sharp hot row then, hopefully, hot work on board. Coxswain Sankey had his men overside the first — the others knew better than to beat Kayes crew — and the stout lieutenant was discreetly shadowed down in case he slipped and made himself a fool. Sam went with Jem Taylor, Will with the shock-head boatswain’s mate, and the strongest oarsmen vied with each other, for once, to do the work.