by Jan Needle
“You go now,” he said. “The white spy she stay with me. You go now or I have you killed. I go kill all of you.”
The words “white spy” sank into her as heavily as lead, but Mildred touched her hand and Deb squeezed back hopefully. She watched the white man’s face for his response. What could he do, or say? His band was outnumbered, and heavily outgunned. She assumed that he would argue, that he had something else to say.
But he did not. While the fat man showed signs of nervousness beside him, the meagre pale man stayed as calm and courtly as could be. He turned his head leftward, and said to one of the other brothers, “Dod?” Dod nodded, and the head moved to the right. He did not speak this time, but the third Scot nodded his assent.
“Then I wish ye joy o’ her, Mister,” said the spokesman. “But I hae to warn ye, she is a spy, ye ha’ the recht o’it on that. Ye’ll hae the Bruttish Navy on your neck fer this dee’s wark, I promise ye. Men. Awa’.”
The Scotsman turned from Marlowe without another word, as if no musket in the world were trained on his defenceless back, and strode past the fat man and back into the wood. His brothers twisted on their heels, then their cohorts, one by one. In half a minute the marauding band had gone. Until the sound of their progress had faded, none of Marlowe’s people moved or spoke. They were disciplined and deadly men.
Deb had studied her new captor while this was going on – for captor he looked and felt like, and he had called her “spy” – and what she saw frightened rather than reassured her. He was a tall man, of extraordinary blackness, as if carved out of ebony, and his air of grandeur was intimidating. His face also had a sculpted air, with thin lips that seemed incapable of smiling, a high-bridged nose, and deep set eyes that had a glower to them, a kind of inward burning. He did not return her look, but had he done so, she knew she would have looked away. Numbers and armaments aside, she felt she knew why the Scotsmen and their allies, black and white, had gone away. Marlowe’s reputation, clearly, was not false.
When the band had gone, though, he did look at her, and his eyes were hard with lack of sympathy. They held hers for a moment, then moved on to Mildred, to whom he spoke rapidly in a tongue unknown to Deb. What he said appeared upsetting, and Mildred’s colour deepened, a darker shadow across the natural dark. She replied with vigour, then seemed enraged by his response. The exchanges went on for some good time, until Marlowe turned his back on both of them, and walked away. Some of his men followed him, leaving a bunch of silent watchers to guard the two young women.
Mildred said: “There been a massacre. Back in East. Marlowe think we know why so.”
Deb was confused.
“But we warned them,” she said. “We warned Bridie. We did know, didn’t we?”
“We warn them, and now Marlowe blame us,” Mildred replied. “He say we warn planters trouble coming, and they say him do it. He say the Windward men bring it, Maroons. But white man blame him, and go on rampage. They get up army all round Kingston, they plan to march ’cross ’ere and do much mischief. And we to blame.”
She read in Deborah’s face a lack of understanding. She cooled her anger down. She reached out and touched her friend on the forearm, then she sighed.
“We come here all this way,” she said. “He think we come to lead the white men to him.”
“But we didn’t know where to find him! You said he’d find us, and so he did. Can’t you tell him we were running too? They destroyed our camp. They killed our friends. Mildred! Can’t you tell him we were running, too?”
Her voice was full of tears, and she thought that she might just fall down and weep. Her hopes had been with Marlowe, he had become a myth, a Holy Grail, a mystical protector. And he was just a man, another man who did not trust her or believe her. How could he think she was a spy?
“The white men would not fight for you,” said Mildred. “Marlowe tell them go, they go. I tell him they only want to play with you, or make you hostage, they not really care. I say you just a thing to them. A thing of no much value, but someone maybe pay for you, a bit.”
Deb licked her upper lip. It was dry and cracking. No one would pay for her, she thought. She was not worth it.
“He not believe me,” Mildred continued. “He said black man is hostage for a white man, not white maid. He say they want you back because you are spy, they want to save you. Marlowe save you because you are with me, no other reason. He know my name and people. He know that I have fought.”
The night had fallen not so long ago. Now in the clearing it was almost black. A soft wind rustled in the trees.
“So he will kill me now?” said Deb. “Or what? Give me back to those Scotchmen? What will he do with me, Mildred? Please don’t let him kill me, if you can.”
“I not think he will kill you,” Mildred said. “I tell him you in love with Navy officer, you betrothed. I tell him he will come for you, when he can. I tell him he in Port Royal, and he have a ship. That is when Marlowe angry. I say Navy man in English ship, and he will come to get you, he is a good man. I tried to tell him, but he think I go crazy, or maybe am spy too. He go storm off, you saw.”
A bunch of tree frogs burst into sound, as if to some secret cue or signal to ironic laughter. The noise swelled until it was almost deafening, then began to throb more quietly. I have to say, thought Deb, that I can see his point. An English man will come to save me, in a Navy ship, but will be a friend. The frogs appeared to have a sense of humour.
“I will talk to him again,” said Mildred. “He knows I not betray him, however false our story seem. We go get food now, we go to their town. I will talk this later. Try make him see.”
The “town” they ended up in that night was not a town by Deb’s understanding, but a transit camp of huts and shelters. There were women there, and a child or two, but it could be abandoned if danger threatened at whatever moment. There were three fires, in a widespread triangle, but the food was meagre and the atmosphere subdued. Mildred and Deb were shown a place to sleep when they had eaten, then left alone for a long while, aware that Marlowe and some other men were talking of their case, probably disputing over them. The women avoided them assiduously, turning blank faces to any overture, and that night, when it was time to sleep, they lay down side-by-side and felt alone in the noisy blackness. Deb, indeed, would have liked to have held Mildred’s hand but did not dare. She thought of Will, and wondered where he was. She gave less credence to the idea he would turn up than Marlowe had, that much was certain. Marlowe thought he might lead an attack. She thought at best he would be helpless to bring aid or comfort, at worst would have forgotten her. She fell asleep exhausted, finally, and had many troubled dreams.
Next day the band moved on, the warriors at least, and Marlowe talked to Mildred much, and Deborah occasionally. He put questions to her through her friend, full of suspicion and distrust. If she loved a Navy man, why was she a runaway? If she loved a Navy man, why was she alone? If she loved a Navy man, why had she become a servant? How could the lover of a Navy man be no better than a slave? How could a white maid claim friendship with a black? Was Mildred in the white man’s secret pay? If this Navy man would come, as Mildred had said, how did he know where he would find them?
Later, Marlowe’s questioning tended more towards the possibility that bargains might be struck, that Deb’s person might be of some value to him and his people. Mildred found this alteration hopeful, she said, as an indication that he believed Deb was sincere. When Deb questioned her on this, not understanding, Mildred was blunt.
“If this Navy man do come for you,” she said, “Marlowe can catch or kill him. Hold him as hostage, maybe – Navy man a useful hostage, yes? But maybe Navy man can give him something back for you? Maybe safe pass or something, I don’t know. Maybe free pardon, something, yes?”
Frankly, Deborah had no idea, although it seemed unlikely to the farthest end. If Will did come – and he would not, for he could not – he surely had no power to make bargains on the Navy’s back,
or anyone’s except his own. She was sinking into a state of melancholy over this, worse than melancholy, although she had no word for it. She had run with Mildred to save her life, was all. Marlowe was to be the one who would help them. It seemed very cruel that she must now offer impossibilities or be cast out, or die.
“He will not come,” she said. “I am sure he will not, Mildred. All this is false. I am no spy, but I have no bargains, neither. We must just tell Mr Marlowe I am not a spy, just a lone maid on her own, a simple runaway. I loved a Navy officer, all that is true. But Will Bentley cannot save me, Mildred. Please tell him, Mildred, please tell Mr Marlowe. It is all a dream.”
But Marlowe, whose survival as a renegade depended on great vigilance, as well as many other things, had already set in train surveillance, had posted lookouts, had warned his outriders what he was seeking and where it might appear, if not when or how. In the meantime Deb was treated cautiously but well, and questioned, along with Mildred, about the killing of Jacob Tsingi, the reprisal and who had done it, the Suttons and the Siddlehams, the number of their bloodhounds, their armaments, and a hundred other things. All the women could give in return, save for a few small facts and figures, was the conviction that the white men would come for the rebels, and come in force.
Then, two days later, they were conducted to the shelter where the lead men sat, and Marlowe smiled at them. There was no warmth in it, his features were not any softer, but he did appear somehow amused, at least. He spoke to Mildred, rapidly, then turned to Deb.
“Your man has come,” he said. “Not in a ship but in a little boat, and that is good. I going have a talk with him.”
*
Dick Kaye was drunk when word was brought to him that there was an envoy from the Scotsmen in the woods. He was sitting on his throne in lonely splendour in the middle of the stockade’s outer court, and he was halfway down his second bottle of the day. Jem Taylor, boatswain, had tried to talk to him an hour earlier, and nearly had his head chewed off. All he had had to tell was that the treasure so far raised was on board the Jacqueline, that she could be under way in half an hour if need be. But Kaye was no longer interested. As an afterthought, he had offered Taylor a slug from out the bottle, which had been refused. Ah well; not his loss.
Since Will and Sam had gone, since Marianne had gone, Kaye had emulated Gunning in his rush into oblivion. The men and warrant officers had watched with sympathy to begin with, and had carried out their loading tasks, their job of striking camp, without much interest that their commander was intent on blotting out the world. All knew the news from Kingston, all sympathised in some degree as past sufferers from the pains of love and random loss, and all knew that he would “get over it,” as they had been forced to do. It was hard to give up diving, but they knew it would be temporary, and they watched with pleasure the amount of saleables that they stuffed down the hold. There were pickings too; it was better than working in a dockyard. Not a man who did not end up with his pockets bulging. Drunk captains do not see much, either: a noble truth.
Gunning’s latest session, having run its full four days, was ending when Kaye started his drinking, so the nauseating bond Tom Hugg and Bosun Taylor had expected to build up between them did not materialise, to their relief. Gunning encouraged his captain in the early stages, but found him too morose, too ready to talk of his dead affianced interminably, too damn frank about his inner feelings. In any way, the normal reaction to the poison in his own blood was well underway, and within an hour of Slack Dickie hitting the brandy bottle, London Jack was on the point of forswearing alcohol forever, as per usual. Had it not made more work for them, the boatswain and his mate would not have cared a jot; as it was they wondered merely if the captain would follow the slope interminably downwards to the gutter, or have lucid periods like Gunning did. Drink was the seaman’s curse, as everybody knew. Provided by their lordships with deliberate intent.
It had been known that “natives” still watched them from the trees from time to time, but it came as a great shock when white men turned up too. The Lamont brothers, like flies to the honeypot, had moved towards the Biter wreck after Marlowe and his rebels had rebuffed them, to check if the Jacqueline had been called back to Port Royal yet, as they were expecting any day. It had occurred to them, what’s more, that news of the captive white maid might be somehow useful. They did not know the circumstances of her flight, nor why the rebel leader had “protected” her, but they guessed it must have some significance for bargaining. They had the recaptured Bob as well, Slack Dickie’s little pet, led on a rope these days in case he tried to run once more.
Because they knew the value of the softest option, the Lamonts chose Rat Baines to do their dirty work. They waited until he was doing his – at noisy stool in the fringes of the woodland – and when they surprised him, rubbed his nose in it, so to speak. They sent Chattel up behind him, silent as a snake, to run the blunt side of his blade across the sailor’s throat. As Baines told it afterwards, if he hadn’t “been at it already, shipmates, I would have shit meself!” He threw himself upright and backwards and Chattel, side-stepping like a dancing master, nudged him into a prickle bush. The Rat, whose instincts for survival were necessarily of the finest, bled, soiled himself, scrabbled at his britches, and stared terrified into his assailant’s face – all without a sound. Although when the Lamonts appeared he gulped, indeed, and came close to swallowing his tongue.
The Lamonts, in a line, looked at him with expressions of deep contempt. Baines, all too used to it, smiled humbly back at them while tying off his waist cords, then wiped his hands clean on some leaves. Perhaps he planned to offer up his hand to shake. If so, he thought better of it. He began to say hello, but stopped that also. The Lamonts, as ever, were in no hurry to articulate. At last Wee Doddie spoke.
“Go and find yer mannie, Ratty Baines,” he said, “tell him we’ve got ten dozen men, wi’ muskets, knives and swords, and we can pick his people off frae within this cover ain by ain. Tell him we’ve got some knowledge for him and we want tae parley, tell him we might help him in the coming war. Tell him we are loyal men.”
Had Baines dared he would have snorted, but he was not a stupid man, beneath it all. He knew nothing of “the coming war” so saw no reason to disbelieve it, but he disbelieved the rest, and roundly. They were not loyal men, and parleying, to them, meant selling information, pure and simple. Obscurely, he was aggrieved, proprietorial. Slack Dickie was his captain now, not theirs, they were faithless rogues and thieves and murderers, deserving nothing. Least of all the chance to worm their way back into favour, and a pardon. He wished to see them hang.
“He wouldn’t come,” he said. “He couldn’t even if he wanted to. He’s drunk.”
Dod’s eyes bored into him for as long as it took Baines’ to drop. Short enough, but time to frighten him to death.
“Fit d’ye mean? Not that mannie, not London Jack. We want tae talk tae Dickie. The captain mannie.”
“It is that mannie,” replied Baines, almost boldly. “Slack Dickie’s taken to the liquor now; it’s him that’s drunk.” A little pause. “Any case, he wouldn’t come, would he? If you’ve got all these men and weaponry? He’s not that mad, is he?” Another tiny break. “If you’ve really got ’em, anyway.”
His courage bled away as the Scotsman raised his hand, but it did not presage a blow, it was a signal. Behind him several men moved into view out of the undergrowth, and they were armed, indeed. Black mainly, but Baines was shocked to recognise Chris Thompson, then Seth Pond. He made a movement with his head, but they did not acknowledge him. Then he noticed a smaller form behind Seth Pond, attached apparently by a rope held in the sailor’s hand.
“You’ve got Black Bob!” said Baines. “Are you alive then, Bob? Well done!”
The small black face convulsed.
“Tell the captain!” Black Bob yelled; and was cut off as Pond jerked the lanyard round his neck. Baines could see him choking on the ground.
“
Ye’ll tell the mannie that we’ve got the men.” said Lamont. “Ye’ll tell him there’s a white wumman who’s held captive b’the niggers yonder, b’the nigger they call Marlowe. Tell him she’s a fine and lovely quiney, and if he wants tae save her for the ransom or fitever, tell him we’ll lead him there. Tell him it’s oor sense ae duty. Tell him he’ll need men and muskets and we’ll bow tae his command. We’ll wait until he’s sober, Ratty, eh? But ye dinna need to tell Slack Dickie that!”
Bonhomie from the Scots was more than even Baines could take. The Lamonts’ hearts were full of hate and murder. He blurted, “Well he won’t be sober by the time we sail, will he? We’re going home to Kingston, so you’ll have to find your bargains somewheres else. And yer bloody pardon!”
Dod raised his pistol, and Rat Baines collapsed onto his knees. So much for courage, might have been his last coherent thought. So much for bloody sauce! But the Scotsman laughed, and Baines opened his eyes to find himself alive.
Fat Mickie Carver shouted, “That’s the way. Ratty! Shite interrupted, shite resumed! He’s nothing if not fair, ain’t Dod Lamont!”
“Thanks for the blockhouse!” added Joshie Ward. “We’ll surely find a use for it!”
The men went off laughing, incautious of the noise they made, and Baines did not await their full disappearance before he hared back to the shore. He had a horrid vision that he was too late, that his shipmates had sailed away and left him there, but nothing had changed. There were men on the Jacqueline’s yards, one of the boats was being hoisted up on deck, another was pulling towards her. On the water’s edge, Tom Hugg was waiting with a crew to take the captain, and the captain’s chair, out to his vessel. Slack Dickie was halfway to the water, staggering.
It took poor Rat some time to make it clear that he had information, because the common tendency was to cuff or ignore him, especially smelling so vilely as he did after his “accident.” But in the end Baines shouted out the name Lamont, and then that they were here, he’d seen them, he had spoken to them, and they had “Black Bob upon a piece of rope.” Hugg was wild to hear more of the Scotsmen, and if they were armed, but Slack Dickie’s brain was fixed upon his small, lost toy. He stood in the water, the wavelets lapping over his leather shoes and stockinged feet unnoticed, and tried to form a question, but only gaped.