The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  “Christ!” said Carver. “It’s Angus! Christ!”

  “Wee Dod,” corrected Thompson. “Not Angus, it’s Wee Dod.”

  “That’s Miller and old Taffy Morgan!” said Seth Pond. “I bloody thought that they were bloody dead!”

  The balance was without a doubt in favour of the Chattel band. They were close to double the men that they confronted, and they had a gun. There was a hostage in the question, but Chattel and Ledermann were happy in the private knowledge that Black Bob, while a charming trinket, had no intrinsic value to their cause. He would be useful if the Scots thought they would take risks to rescue him, in that they might be taken off their guard that way. With that in mind the Chattels moved forward confidently, and were gratified to see Wee Doddie and his fellows moving back, to halt in the centre of the plateau, no shelter within a dozen yards all round. Chattel approached them frontally from one flank, Ledermann from the other. They came face-to-face two yards apart.

  Wee Dod Lamont stared at them through his pale, blank eyes, his face revealing absolutely nothing. Not fear, not interest, not even a spirit of assessment. His face was long and thin as it had always been, his body as scrawny and muscular. Had his clothes not been a deal more raggedy, it could have been but yesterday his shipmates had last seen him, despite it had been many weeks. His right hand hung at his side, the cutlass tip resting on the ground, while his left hand held Black Bob’s neck in a casual grip that clearly caused great pain.

  “Ho, Dod!” said Seth, and Carver glared and hissed at him. On board the Biter the Lamont brothers had been deeply hated men. Now here was one of them at bay, at last a victim not a perpetrator. Wee Dod turned his pale eyes on Seth, and did not know him. That was fine by them.

  “Drop down your arms,” said Chattel evenly.

  “Why?”

  “I go kill you.”

  “I go kill the loon.”

  The East Coast accent was so strong that even the English sailors could hardly understand what he was saying. The “loon,” however, clearly was Black Bob, who cringed and shrieked as Dod put further pressure on his neck. Chattel merely laughed.

  “Drop down your arms. Count one two three I go for kill you.”

  Chattel raised his big old horseman’s piece and aimed fairly at the Scotsman’s face. The muzzle was not six feet away, the barrel steady as a rock. Wee Dod Lamont was unaffected. His thin lips almost sneered.

  “Christ,” said Seth, hit by a sudden ray of understanding. “But where’s the other two?”

  A flash, a plume of smoke, a bang, and the shrieks and howling of innumerable birds. The ball hit Ledermann, not Chattel, who could have pulled his trigger out of shock if nothing else but did not. Ledermann, tall, powerful, beautiful, fell like a broken tree, the smoke from the point-blank shot flowing over him, a moving shroud. Angus Lamont, just like his brother but a slight shade more robust, stepped from the trees, unsmiling. But his musket had not been fired yet.

  “There’s aye anither o’s,” was all he said.

  Fat Mickey Carver, the leader of his own small band, now proved his leadership. Before Chattel could make a move, he stepped smartly up behind him, and clubbed him flat into the temple with the hasp of his seaman’s knife. It was a heavy blow, shrewdly aimed, and Chattel staggered sideways. As Ward and Pond removed themselves from their black allies to rejoin the former enemy, Rabbie Lamont appeared from out the underbrush, his smoking musket already half reloaded. Carver plucked the pistol from Chattel’s hand, switched it sharply end-for-end, and proffered the butt to Dod.

  “I’ve brought some handy niggers for you,” he said, with rather strained joviality. “And there might be treasure, too.”

  As Dod pushed Black Bob to the ground, switched his cutlass to his left hand and took the pistol, one of his own black cohorts spoke to Chattel in an Akan tongue. Dod, without a pause, turned and shot him in the stomach. The man screamed briefly, then lay groaning.

  “Aye,” said Dod, to nobody and all. “Any ither gammers?” And to Carver: “Fit treasure? Or dae ye wint a bullet too?”

  Carver, who had gone a little pale, essayed a smile.

  “Treasure for the taking,” he replied. “Can your slaves swim? Mine can, some of ’em. And Black Bob.”

  *

  The Windward Maroons were well aware that the Siddlehams’ plantation and the Sutton place were denuded as the white men and their bloodhounds rampaged to the lee – it was a not unusual mistake the planters made. One time in five that they went to wreak revenge and punishment on the stupid slaves, the stupid slaves struck back at empty houses, and boudoirs containing virgins with no protection but to scream and have the vapours. The island history was littered with such disasters; proving to the white men that the blacks were godless savages and to the black that whites were brainless fools. After every degradation a vast militia would be raised, slaves’ meagre dwellings would be razed, and the exodus of returnees to good old England would roar upwards from its eternal trickle to a flood. For every white maiden raped and butchered five blacks would be hanged, four families return to the motherland, three prospective settlers change their minds and stay in Birmingham or Leeds.

  In the Siddleham estate, the carnage was appalling. The Maroons swept down from Portland and the Blue Mountains, and the slaves and workers who got wind in advance took care to disappear. The white folk who were left – two minor household men, the dowager, Miss Marianne and her sisters Lucy and Elizabeth – suffered in varying degrees before they died, according, it appeared, to how they took the Maroons’ tormenting. Marianne, haughty and outraged, was quickly gone, because she fought so wildly that she could not even be raped in any comfort, while the two younger girls excited their attackers with their screaming, and were stripped and spreadeagled until they could take no more; then strangled to cut off their incessant howling. Lady Siddleham, so plump and comfortable, saw what was coming and killed herself and two Maroons with a hidden pistol and a darning bodkin. The menfolk, on the other hand, were merely slaughtered, by knives across the neck.

  Three slaves were also caught and killed, two household females taken off as booty, and all the crystalware was smashed and silken drapes and hangings pissed or shitten on. To Mr Mather, when he surveyed the scene in full daylight, it seemed depressingly familiar; he only wondered why they had not burnt the mansion down. And at the Suttons’ place the scene was not dissimilar, although the materials were less opulent. All glass broken, all chairs and tables smashed, and two dead slaves nailed to a stable door. There were no women there, but no one knew how many there had been to start with, except for Bridie Connor, and she had got away. This happenstance, when Mather thought about it, filled him with deep suspicion. She became his major suspect.

  In fact, though, Bridie had escaped only because she had gone to give the warning. The network to the west had relayed the message from Mildred at breakneck speed, and it had reached its target – the white woman at the Suttons’ place – early on that night. There would be a raid, no one knew when but very soon, as a reprisal on the beasts who had killed Captain Jacob Tsingi, and on their land, and slaves, and property. The final messenger had not known why the plantation dwellers should be warned, because they obviously deserved whatever they deserved, but the message from Mildred was backed up by the name of Marlowe, which was sacrosanct. He had known Mildred in the past, it was relayed, and was prepared to do her bidding and wait to meet her face-to-face for explanations.

  Bridie, who was astonished by the peace that surrounded the Sutton dwelling now Alf and Seth were gone, nevertheless hurried to Kingston as if her life depended on it. She had no ass or mule but she covered the miles in an almost tireless, rhythmic pace, her bare soles uncut or bothered by the hard and dusty road. She had heard many past stories of the things that bloodhounds and their mastermen had done, and she had no little knowledge of the reprisals taken on outlying, lonely houses and plantations. In truth she had no sympathy for the Suttons and their ilk, less for the high a
nd mighty Siddlehams, but she was no lover of savage men of whatever creed or colour. She had hoped to find a better, fairer life on this green isle than she’d known on the bare and barren fields of her home country, but had been quickly disabused. Violence and hatred were the norm in Ireland; they were the norm here ditto. She was as sickened by the thought of black men killing white as vice versa.

  It was not very late when she arrived at Holt and Bentley’s lodgings, and she clattered up the stairs noisily enough for Sam to have the door open when she hove into sight. They were startled enough to see her, but her succinct exposition had them galvanised. She made it clear their instant task must be to alert the acting governor and raise militia.

  They pulled on coats for sake of protocol more than necessity, and in half a minute were in the narrow street. Bridie began to hurry off in front of them, but Sam called her back while Will searched for wheeled transport, failing which he shouted to the mule man they often hired from, and got two big ones and a double saddle. Bridie was thrown up behind him like a farmer’s wife, and gripped him as he beat the mule up into a run. Sam forged ahead and had no truck with slowpokes in the way, hallooing and whipping with brazen determination. Within minutes they were free of the traffic and chaos of the town.

  “Which one first?” yelled Sam, across his shoulder. “Ought we to warn the people at the houses? There are maidens at the Siddlehams’. At the Suttons’ too, for aught I know.”

  “‘They know it all already there,” Bridie shouted back. “There might be some daft enough to linger, but I’m doubting it. No one will try to save the house at all. Why should they, so? It is the Suttonses’!”

  “But what of the people at the Siddlehams’?” asked Will. “Will they be warned? Did you send anyone to tell them to run clear?”

  Even through the violent shaking of the mule he could feel the negative of her body movement.

  “Who would have gone?” she said. “Why should the slaves risk… Ach, Mister, you do not understand the half, do you? We have to get the army out. Take that road, up to Mr Mather now!”

  Sam said: “But should we – must we not tell them? We could perhaps…”

  Do nothing, was the truth of it, they knew. However few the Maroon men might turn out to be, they would be a match for two English Navy men with only blades and pistols. What hope they had of saving lives lay in pre-emption, with force brought in. Will kicked his mule up the rocky road to Mather’s house, with Samuel following. They went at breakneck speed.

  Andrew Mather was entertaining guests, but social niceties were blown out of the water. At first the Kingston “tone” looked deep askance at the common woman up behind the small blond-headed officer, but two gabbled sentences altered that. Wives and daughters were packed off to withdrawing rooms while the menfolk roared and shouted – some fired up already with the drink – and sent urgent messages to other militia officers and their men. To Will’s surprise their speed and efficiency was of quite high order, and within an hour there were approaching fifty men-at-arms assembled, most with mules, some with asses, and the leading lights with the horses that they used for hunting, in the normal way.

  Despite some jostling, the lead was clearly Mather’s, and he spoke extremely sharply when Ephraim Dodds began his usual muttering against the Navy men. All the older planters known to Will and Sam were there, most of the younger having gone with the Siddlehams and Suttons on their jolly depredations, but they were robust enough, and had some canny, bulky fighters at their sides. They struck out into the aromatic night with anger and determination, which rose to anticipatory lust for blood as the Siddleham holdings came into sight. The pace increased, and the final half a mile or so was taken at the charge.

  Had the attack not already taken place, it is likely some on the plantation might have died of fright at the rushings and the shouting and hallooing. But suddenly it became a silence almost stunned. Bridie dropped down off Bentley’s mule, looked about her, and slipped into the night. When they reached the Sutton house an hour later, she was waiting for them, dry-eyed in the wilderness. There were two corpses only, she reported, so the rest had possibly made it clear away. Late next morning though, Mather announced that she would be arrested, and only changed his mind when Sam and Will gave him verse and chapter of the lead-up to the vile events.

  On their other information, though, the acting governor was adamantine – and in full agreement with all the other grandees of the island. Deborah Tomelty had brought about the massacre, had met up with the Leeward men and got them to raise a marauding party, and given them the targets to destroy. The deaths of Lady Siddleham, of Marianne and Lucy and Elizabeth, were her direct responsibility, and anyone who argued otherwise was a traitor and a fool.

  Will Bentley did so argue, as did Sam Holt. They argued long and hard in the Assembly building, under the troubled gaze of Captain Shearing, and the baleful one of Lieutenant Jackson. They argued that the massacre was done by the Windward treaty men not as a result of the bloodhounds’ depredations in the west but as a direct result of the death of Captain Jacob Tsingi. Mather and Dodds, and Hodge and others of the island leaders, denied it with the utmost fervour, and said that Treaty Maroons did not break treaties, it was impossible. And when Marlowe’s name was mentioned the case was lost.

  “Marlowe!” Hodge roared at Will. “You name Marlowe and innocence in one breath? You are not an island man, sir! Your lack of knowledge is a… is a…”

  Mather, almost mildly, came to their aid.

  “Marlowe is a noted renegade,” he said. “A former slave who has disdained treaty offers in the past. He is known to kill without discrimination, black men as well as white. If Miss Tomelty is with him, then she is lost indeed.”

  “Miss Tomelty?” boomed Ephraim Dodds. “You give the slut a title, sir? You grace her with a token of respect! She is consorting with a murderer! She is of his band! She has led him to poor Lady Siddleham, to the poor maidens Lucy and Elizabeth! The poor, degraded, violated…”

  He broke down on a sudden sob. The silence in the room was positively violent, but Bentley dared to speak.

  “It is a rumour only, sirs,” he said, quiet but distinctly. “Bridie Connor said only that the warning came through his good offices, because the woman Mildred knew of him and wished that bloodshed should be prevented. Bloodshed from the Windward men, from the Blue Mountains.”

  It brought only pandemonium. Almost every word that he had uttered was the opposite of what they wished to hear, or would believe. There was shouting for immediate reprisal, for an expedition, for mass executions, for the torture of the savage and the slut. The noise came to control only when a knocking on the door persisted until it could not be ignored. It was a black man, in the livery of the Navy offices. He looked beseechingly at Captain Shearing, but Jackson lurched up to him with an air of angry menace.

  “Yes? You blunder in! Yes?”

  The servant had a simple message, but it cut into Sam and Will like a stiletto. There was a ship. Off the Palisadoes. A fast gig had come ashore with a dispatch. The ship was called the Pourquoi Pas, but she flew the English flag. Her captain was called Captain Daniel Swift. He was preparing a salute.

  “Shit and muffins,” muttered Sam to Will. “She should have been the Bad Penny, shouldn’t she? I think we’re going to see some blood. I think we’re like to wallow in it…”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Scotsmen had a salvage crew, and now they had a phalanx of white men to rule and dominate the blacks, which was, they all agreed, as it should be. The man who’d spoken in the Akan tongue soon died, in satisfactory agony, and Chattel was punched about a little by Wee Dod, man to man, in the age-old way of Aberdeen sea folk when establishing a hierarchy. Chattel, bloodied and bemused, was treated kindly after this humiliation, and told in language that he could barely comprehend that Dod was now his “mannie” and he was his mannie’s “loon.” One of the other blacks told him later that it was not in fact humiliating, for the blond
-beards were not humans, they were some kind of wizards or obeah men. They could swallow swords, shit bullets, and fly through the air at will. Chattel did not believe: and kept his counsel.

  The Scotsmen also had their Black Bob back, and this filled them with a sort of glee that struck truly as inhuman. They did nothing physical at first, but he lived in terror once again, and they took the greatest pleasure from it. Wee Doddie, in particular, could bring the boy to tears, and even make him gibber like a tortured monkey, without a finger laid upon him. From time to time they paid him no concern, with such dedication that the boy began to feel that he was almost free. Indeed, they left him once, deliberately, to see if he would run, so they could hunt him down and punish him. He was alone for an hour, deep in the woods, no sight of any human, black or white. And he sat there, whimpering, and did not move an inch. Rabbie crept up behind him after that, to punish him in any case. He did it with his tongue.

  None of Bob’s fellows, white or black, could help in any way. Carver and Co, who had not known him well on board the Biter, had grown to appreciate his odd contentment and his bright black eyes, and watched with churning stomachs as the Lamonts toyed with him. They said nothing, cue taken from Barrel Morgan and Dusty Miller, who had been with the Scotsmen for an age by now, and knew the rules to stay alive. Chattel and his men, and the renegades who had teamed up with the Scots already, suffered for the boy in their way, or were perhaps indifferent, how could the white men tell? But the boy was suffering, not a manjack of them could avoid sight of that, however much they tried. Had he had a blade, or found a cliff to do it from, he might have killed himself, they thought.

  The blacks who had taken Carver and his fellows captive had professed no interest in the Biter treasure, but the Lamont brothers were interested in nothing else. They had a camp quite close to the plateau where Bob had been ambushed, and for the first night repaired there with all their new-found cohorts. Not to eat or drink, but to fillet them like landed fish for every bit of information that they knew. They heard of Kaye’s first attempts at diving, of the exodus and slaughter of the other mutineers, of the building of the palisade, the arrival of the French ship with Bentley and London Jack on board, the continued attempts at salvage, and the ship’s departure and eventual return. Carver praised up the diving boys that he had “trained,” spoke of their success – and never mentioned silver or doubloons.