by Jan Needle
“At any rate, they will have done their best for us,” he said. “Even you two must allow that they were sterling fighting men. If anyone could bring this off successfully for us, the Lamonts were the top. But they’ll be dead, no doubt of it at all. Ah well, let’s open up the letters that we’ve had from home.”
It was a pleasant evening in the cabin, with the windows open wide and the scented air filling the space and complementing the rich wine that Kaye provided. In the Navy way, as they had guessed, some of the letters had been following the Biter for an age, but they were nonetheless welcome for that fact. Will had a sweet one from his sister Lal, with a little note from Martha added on (in French, the show-off — she was barely ten!), and another from his Uncle Daniel Swift. This said he knew William had made contact with “Fat Dickie’s father,” and that he approved it mightily. He was in almost constant contact with “my lord” and had Will thought of a match between himself and the elder daughter? He had heard she was ill-fared, but her fortune was in no doubt at all, and Will might get as much as twenty thousand “for his pains in prodding her.”
He added, “Females are susceptible to flattery in my experience, and especially flattery through the mail. A man may tell no end of dastardy and be not brought to book, by passage of good old Father Time.” What was more, he wrote, “One can make love to an ugly harridan in script and imagine her as fair as Nellie Gwyn to Charlie in the song. And on the marriage night, just close your eyes and think of bags of gold.”
This missive was so unexpected and so very lower-deck, that Bentley was completely knocked off guard. He gasped as he read the more scabrous portions, and when he’d finished became aware that Kaye and Holt were gazing at him with bated breath.
“Well!” said Will, as flustered as a maiden. “My Uncle Swift would have me married off! And to your sister, Captain Kaye! Good God, he is exceeding bold!”
Slack Dickie cackled like a giant crow, but Holt, who had a letter of his own, responded almost sourly. Before he had a chance to speak, Kaye expressed his firm belief that Will could do much better in the bedroom stakes, despite the fact his “pretty love had turned out black man’s whore!” He did concede, though, that “Felicity is very pretty in the purse department,” and pointed out that as his brother, Will would be duty bound to pay his gaming debts for him! His own letters, both from Swift and from his father, were more on business matters, continued hopes of sinking money in some land and slaves, perhaps, continued hopes that Swift could somehow wangle it so he could bring a vessel to the Indies “privately.” It was not until some hours later, when Holt and Bentley shared a section of the rail to look out at the velvet night, that Sam revealed, with slight embarrassment, that his own, unexpected letter had been from what he called, half-bitterly, “Will’s betrothed.”
It took Will some moments to comprehend. Then he could not see why ever she had written, which made Sam laugh.
“I told you, Will!” he said. “Be not so oafish, man! To you it might be just a hatchet face; to me, I promise you, it is a sort of female beauty!”
“But to write to you! That’s…”
“That’s unexpected. Unlooked for. But exceeding welcome, let me tell you. We did a little walk together, to get away from that horsey brat the sister, and we got along like fun. But I never thought that she would write to me; and on the instant, it appears. No other woman ever did.”
“The only other woman that I know that speaks to you can’t write, can she? But poor Annette. Hell, Sam, what will the whippet say if you should wed Felicity?”
“I can’t though, can I?” said Sam. “For she’ll be a match for you, and bring you wealth and whippersnappers. Good God, I hope they do not have your height!”
“Or her nose!” said Will. “Don’t write her that I said that, Sam! I put you on your honour, such as ’tis! By Jingo, though — to think my friend’s in love.”
That was another jest, but Sam did not deny it, and sighed rather.
“That seems too strong a word; I’ve only met her once,” he said. “But honestly… well… I thought her rather fine, as I have said. Is your uncle serious, do you think? About your prospects as Slack Dickie’s legal brother? And would that make you some sort of earl, like Dickie’s meant to be, and if so, would you use it? Christ, I hope I do not have to call you something stupid! Lord Billy Bentley, companion of the garter and the placket. Shit! In any case. I’m not the friend struck down by love, am I? That’s you.”
He knew he’d stepped too cruel with that one, and fell silent, staring at the water. Since the meeting on the island, he knew that Will had thought of Deb obsessively. Back in Jamaica they would go ashore, however great the obstacles, and seek until they found her.
“I’m sorry, Will,” he said. “That was — ”
But a cry came drifting downwards then, an unusual cry from a lookout. Pitched low, to travel but not travel far, to warn but not be overheard. Indeed, the night was very still and calm, with just sufficient breeze to light the ship along.
“Sirs,” the voice hissed down once more. “A sail, to larboard. I catch the moonlight in her upper canvas.”
“Where away?” Sam called back, soft but urgently. “We cannot see her from down here.”
There was a short time before the man replied, and in it both lieutenants jumped on to the rail and stretched their eyes. By looking up they could see where he was staring. He was a good man, and good-sighted, named Locking.
“Fine on the larboard quarter,” came the call. “Almost dead astern. It is a brig, I reckon. I’m getting flashes off two sails. Topgallants, as I guess.”
“Ah,” Will breathed. “Two masts, then. She ain’t our Santa, damn it.”
“Let’s aloft,” said Sam. “I still can’t see a thing, can you?”
They climbed rapidly until they reached the main-top. Sam still saw nothing, but Will caught a flash, then another, which must have been pale canvas. It was several miles away. He stared up to Locking, who had shinned the last feet of bare pole, good man.
“Can you see which way she’s heading? What is it, merchant or ship o’ war? Hang on, I’ll come up with you.”
By the time he got there, disappointment. Locking, glancing down beyond his feet at Bentley’s upturned face, shook his head regretfully.
“I’ve lost him, sir. The angle of the moon, I guess. Smallish ship, sir, with them low sticks the Spanish favour, I would wager.” He smiled. “Well, I wouldn’t put my mother’s life on it. I’d say coastguard, though. One of them we saw before, mebbe.”
Will stared until his eyes began to play him tricks, but saw nothing more he could hold on to. He must assume, therefore, he told himself, that Locking would be right in that: it was the Guarda. We have seen them, he thought, but have they seen us? He tried to guess it, from the way the moonlight threw.
“Will he see us from there, Locking? The moon’s behind us, but it’s high.”
Locking said instantly, “Not a chance of it, sir. The light’s on him and coming back at us. He could only see us if he was upwind, like we to him. Upwind, upmoon, you know what I mean. I say we are invisible.”
“On your mother’s life?” smiled Bentley.
“She died ten year ago, sir. So I will risk her, aye. For what it might be worth…”
Bentley slid down quickly to the main-top, and talked it over with his friend. It was some hours until dawn, and they thought it pointless to bring down the upper sails, for both agreed Locking was right about their visibility. In any way, the sky was clouding up appreciably, which meant God was on their side (as Sam allowed, with cheerful blasphemy).
“My guess is,” Will said, “she’s heading squarish across our stern, but away from us, thank heaven. When the sun comes up there’ll be no hint or sign of us, but if we shed sail, she’d be that much closer, wouldn’t she? We’re making five knots, maybe, so by breakfast time we’ll be twenty mile away or more, well in the clear. Let’s keep Slack Dickie in the dark till then, or he’ll
have fits. Bad enough that the Spanish are so assiduous. I doubt it’s just a passer by.”
When they told Kaye at breakfast time that they may have seen a sail in dead of night, but were by no means certain it was not a chimera, he was indeed agitated. The chance of finding the Santa afloat he still rated very low, whatever Gunning thought, but it shook him that the Guarda-Costa might be active in the search. Worst case of all, he said, would be if Biter found the galleon, full of Spanish plate, and while they were in “the act of piracy” half the Spanish fleet hove up.
There was a worse case even than that, however, and in six hours or thereabouts it started to unfold. To Kaye’s astonishment, then disbelief, then joy, they raised the Santa, ran her down despite the failing wind and murky weather, and boarded her. They found the Scotchmen, sober, bold, and sanguine, and they found Morgan and Dusty Miller too, alive and well. They did not find the Spaniards, however, but they quickly found out why. There had been a fight, the Lamonts said. The Dons had tried to seize the vessel back again, and the Biter men had won the bitter day. There was treasure still on board, a mass of it — and the Spaniards were dead.
Will and Sam, between themselves, found it difficult to believe. Hard to believe, and not a small amount distasteful. But Kaye believed it, and his euphoria was a sight to see. The witnesses to the Biter’s act of piracy were now no more, killed honourably and through their own base treachery, and he was rich enough, once he had stripped and sunk the galleon, to blow his troubles all away.
“By Christ,” said Holt, blaspheming but less cheerfully, “I hope Slack Dick believes in God, that’s all. If this is true, it would convert the Devil.”
Not many hours afterwards, back on board the Biter and dead drunk, Willie Morgan told a different story. The Spaniards, when they had finished helping save the treasure-laden Santa from the storm, had been deemed superfluous. Two had had their throats cut while asleep, a third was axed to death while struggling, and the others had been thrown overside to drown, or feed the sharks. Even the men who shared the general feeling that booty was welcome from whatever source, were silenced to the soul by it. To save seamen from drowning, then to murder them in the vilest of cold blood… it was unconscionable.
Will Bentley and Sam Holt also received the information. It fell to them to bear the knowledge, and convey it to Slack Dickie. That he was only safe until the Scotch should turn their blades and minds on him.
TWENTY-FIVE
Cut your throat or run, Bridie had counselled, and Deb soon found the choice was made for her. Half of the night was filled with drumming, and the latter hours with attacks by the planters’ loyal slaves. They came into the compound by the factory in silence in the early hours, but the men of the huts had moved to guard outside, and they were ready for them. The Fido-men had axes, whips, and staves; the defenders — who like all the slaves stole cane-knives whenever and wherever they could find them unaccounted for — had unburied their three-foot slashers, wrapped rags around the ends for handles, and whetted rusty edges razor-sharp.
In the blackness, the fight was swift and bloody, but the planters’ men were at the disadvantage. The first attack was over in five minutes, and when the bloodhounds reappeared with Seth, who had guns and a lantern, their rout was even faster. A top slave driver, Patch, was speared between the shoulders to fall screaming, and as his companions turned to face the attack, a volley of thrown spikes brought three more down. Seth discharged two muskets quite at random, striking a young woman in a hut, then was forced to run with his own drivers. His father, Alf, who had already furiously berated him for his tactics, revealed that he had sent for the Siddlehams. With preparation time, it would take them about an hour and a half to get there.
It seemed to Deb that everyone must run, but the slaves whose homes these were thought differently, and it broke her heart. Kaia, among those who would not go, indeed was too much in pain to travel far before collapsing, tried to explain it. Here, she said, they were a group who knew each other and were equals in their misery. The work was killing them by degrees, but they knew at least that all were doomed together, and could scratch out a little happiness by sharing life, and food, and speech. Off the plantation, who knew what they might find?
Deb, whose life had almost been defined by running, could not really understand this sentiment. Here, to her, was a place as evil as Wimbarton’s, say, and a great deal more likely to be fatal. The white men who owned their lives were mad, and the Africans who acted as their drivers and their armament were blind to any struggle for survival but their own. Bonzo had been killed for doing nothing, and the others would be killed for finding it unbearable. Alf Sutton and his one remaining son could not afford to lose more of their labour, but were prepared to kill them all, or see them die. She, who had run from a peaceful place beside a peaceful river because she had been young and stupid and dissatisfied, could not believe these people would not run to get out of this holocaust. As she looked at Kaia, hoping to convey all this, she cried, instead. And Kaia shared her tears.
After the third assault, though, some did run, and with this group Deb threw in her lot. It came not too long before dawn, and it was led by Sutton on his great black mule, by Seth on a white gelding, and by the Siddleham males, father Sir Nathaniel and all three sons. As they swept towards the factory compound the drumming in the thickets reached crescendoes, then swooped and fluttered before the onslaught like game birds beaten out of cover, and disappeared. The white planters led the charge, with the Siddlehams’s white overseers like two iron flanks, and a roaring mass of black men, all on foot. They crashed through huts and shelters, laying waste to every normal scrap of living and of life. Bones were broken, children trodden under foot and hoof, beds and cooking pots and stools churned into pieces. Sir Nathaniel, as a salute to origins perhaps, blew on a hunting horn he’d brought from England and gave his sons a constant “View halloo!”
The blackness and the chaos was complete, and Deborah, after the first rush, was carried on a wave of black humanity. Mabel was in the mass, with her small, screaming son; and Kaia’s brother, whom Deb had thought would die, was in the van, long knife in hand, his ruined face wrapped in a bandage and green leaves; two other young men that she knew, whose names she could not catch in their own language and she dared not call as Flight and True; Mollie from the kitchen (whose name was Goanitta); and a girl called Mildred, who was tall, and strong, and warned off young white men with her icy eyes. All around her in the fetid darkness of the bush, Deb sensed other people fleeing, heard grunts, and shouts, and screams. Behind all was the roaring of the white men and their hounds, the thumping of their horse and mule hooves. Barking too, and baying, as not all the hounds were human, and every now and then a gunshot.
It was chaos mostly, though, to Deb, who was a small part only of a body that she did not understand and in no wise could control. She appeared to run for endless ages, across terrain that went from loam, to sand, to bog, to thicket, and finally to blur. Her throat began to burn, her lungs to give her tearing, jerking pain, her heart and blood to hammer in her ears and brain. At one point she thought she heard an English shout — “The whore, the whore, there goes the Spithead whore!” — but maybe she was overwhelmed, or bedlam. She crossed roads with the fleeing slaves, she crossed a river with Mabel’s son clasped to her and Mabel lost, she saw other slaves, as the escapees approached them, go running off to hide in case of guilt by implication. The terrain was advantageous to them in the most part, and hindered men on horses with long guns and swords, even hindered Sutton’s giant mule. The slaves knew where they were going, also, while the followers did not.
The hunt ended, for Deborah, on a great disaster. They came to a small river, not wide but deep and rocky with steep sides, and their pursuers were not far behind them. To Deb’s relief, Mabel had reappeared to take her child back, and was fleet enough to help the white maid down the unstable slopes and through the churning water. As they clambered up the opposing steepness, a bay hun
ter burst from the jungle they had come from and thundered breakneck towards the edge. It was ridden by a pale-haired man with a cutlass and a hunting horn, who realised too late he must either stop or fly. Mabel and Deb both gasped and cowered as he took off, Mabel’s son howling as rocks and clumps cast by the hooves rained down. But the horse, eyes wide and nostrils flaring, knew it could not make the distance and threw its head back, screaming, just before it hit the other bank. It landed on its chest on the rocky angle and burst its heart presumably, and Sir Nathaniel was projected ungainly forward, hitting rocks and trees, his body twisting like a doll. Deb and Mabel, despite themselves, had to stop and see if they could help — but quickly doubted that they could. He was spread out like a starfish, staring at the sky, and he was grievously hurt.
As they stood and watched in silence, with the small boy moaning quietly, the man opened his eyes, focusing them momentarily on Deb. “Ah,” he breathed. “The English whore. Please help me.” Deborah, in a foreign land, stood facing Englishness and all the learning of her life so far. This man was rich, and old, and powerful, and like her was far away from home. Theirs were the only two white faces in the gully, now crowded round the edges once again. Their eyes locked and spoke to each other across the great divide. She saw that he was dying, or crippled beyond restitution, or drowning in despair. His lips moved, he tried to open his mouth, form words, but for the present, no more came.