‘No you don’t, Cephas Crespin, or I promise I’ll . . .’
She swung back her stick, but he was inside her reach too quickly and grabbed her by the throat, making her drop it. He snarled: ‘Or you’ll what?’
Her only answer was to gouge at his ill-shaven face like a wildcat. He punched her to the ground, then dived on top of her. He thumped her in the gut, slammed back her head, and flipped her over so she lay on her belly. Sitting on her posterior, he wrenched her sack from her shoulders, almost pulling her arms out of their sockets. She screamed with frustration at being clamped down. She cared not for the sack but kept up her struggle to give Paul time to get back to the thoroughfare, where he might find help from people on their way to church.
Pinning her torso down with his knees, the pauper plunged a hand into the sack to make sure the stones were there. But a dull, heavy blow sent him sideways.
On the relief of the pressure on her nape, she looked round to see Paul standing there, holding her stick. Then the boy swiped away her bag from the pauper, who was cupping his right ear.
‘Leave it, Paul!’ she cried out before the man, still on his knees, lunged for it like a rabid beast.
Still in a daze from the blows, she scrambled onto her hands and knees and threw herself between the pauper and her son. She was not going to lose another child while there was still life in her. The pauper staggered to his feet and booted the boy, who fell to the ground winded, and then stamped his booted foot down on Jeanne’s shoulder.
Amid the leaves and insects of the woodland litter, she saw her son lying on the ground where the pauper’s knife had fallen. With a feral scream, she crawled desperately to reach him. Two powerful blasts of a gun were the last things she heard before closing her eyes.
*
Jeanne saw herself standing, pregnant, holding her two-year-old daughter in her arms, with Paul and his elder sister, watching the cows being led into Mon Plaisir meadow, which lay between the house and old Renac’s farm. The meadow had been given over to pasture that year. The gentle warmth of the sun made her face tingle as everything became a blur. Then her gaze met the soft yellow canvas of a moving cart, illuminated by the sun shining on the other side. Realising she was no longer in a dream, she turned her stiff neck. ‘Paul,’ she said. The boy was looking out into the moving landscape, where a river ran parallel to the track behind them. He turned towards her. In a calmed voice, she continued, ‘Paul, my boy.’
‘You are safe now, Mama,’ he said as she gestured for him to move closer. She felt the twinge of her swollen skin when she brought his face to hers. But it did not matter. She just needed to feel the cheek of her child on her bare skin.
The cart slowed. Before Paul could give any explanation, Jeanne heard a familiar voice.
‘We found her. On the road from Neunkirch.’ She recognised the voice of Etienne Lambrois.
‘And not a moment too soon neither, by God,’ said the voice of Jeannot Fleuret.
‘She’s in a poor state,’ said Lambrois as the carriage came to a halt. The flap was pulled to one side.
‘My God, my poor woman,’ said Claire. Slowly, Jeanne removed herself from the cart. She embraced Claire—Claire with her large bump. Then she was met by Ginette. The two women fell into each other’s arms.
‘My God, look at you. I shouldn’t have left you,’ said Ginette, tears in her eyes, ‘but I couldn’t stay . . . I lost my boy.’
‘I know, Ginette, I know,’ said Jeanne gently. ‘That’s why I came as soon as I found out.’
‘But he’s still here, isn’t he?’ said Ginette, touching her large bosom. ‘Where I keep my other darling butterflies.’
‘Yes, my Ginette,’ said Jeanne, with her hand on her own heart, ‘and he is here too.’
TWENTY
On the afternoon of August 24, five haggard and thirst-bitten castaways staggered from their gig onto the boardwalk at North Dock.
The port town was only just rousing from its siesta as they paused outside Customs House. It was closed. So they proceeded opposite onto Lime Street, where a tavern or three showed signs of life. On the veranda of the first establishment, a group of pretty painted ladies were sitting on stools or leaning on posts. They were smoking, chatting, or just drowsily watching the world and his mistress go by.
‘Hey, prince!’ called one of the temptresses in accented English, but the five men did not even turn their heads. Instead they dived into the cool tavern opposite, where the sawdust was freshly laid, and they ordered beer, broth, bread, and a pipe of wine to begin with. Two hours later, only Jacques Rouchon, Jacob Delpech, and the bosun—whose name was Benjamin Fry—re-emerged to report the shipwreck.
It was past six o’clock. The street was alive now with walkers, lookers and drinkers, and labourers rolling barrels towards the dock. The colourful painted ladies of the bawdy house across the street were down to three and busy in banter with a disparate bunch of matelots, five or six in number. They must have come from aboard the tall ship newly moored in the bay, thought Jacob as he and his mates made their way back towards Customs House.
‘Up there’s the Exchange,’ said Benjamin Fry, who nodded to a building up the street on the right where groups of merchants were in discussion. ‘And further up’s the governor’s place.’
They were crossing Queen Street, which was lined with rum shops and half-timbered houses. It led to the lieutenant governor’s stone-built mansion. Soldiers in red coats, darkies carrying baskets, and a whole array of ladies and gentlemen in fashionable attire created the colourful street scene. It did not seem so wicked a place as all that, thought Jacob.
‘I wager that’s where a buccaneer will fetch his letters,’ said Rouchon, turning to Delpech with a cheeky grin. Jacob knew he was referring to letters of mark, which gave privateers a legal right to attack Spanish ships and settlements. They had spoken about them in the tavern where Fry and Harry had given a brief rundown.
But Jacob was no longer listening. In fact, he suddenly found himself struggling to even put one foot in front of the other. Must be the heat or perhaps the fatigue, he thought to himself as he wiped his brow.
They continued across the east-west road, bathed in sunlight, and strolled to the door of Customs House to report the shipwreck. Rouchon turned to say something to Jacob, but then checked himself and said: ‘You all right, Monsieur Delpech? You look a bit green around the gills, I must say.’
‘Ye—yes, thank you. Must be the effects of the . . . the . . .’
‘Of the what?’ said Rouchon.
But Jacob was unable to think: his mind was swimming; the words to describe his meal eluded him. He bent over and touched his knees to catch his breath, and he felt like he was standing aboard the Sally-Ann again. As he looked up, his eyes were met by a whirling landscape of sky, sun, and buildings. Then his legs collapsed beneath him.
Face up, the next thing he saw was a succession of talking faces. They belonged to Rouchon, the bosun, a soldier in scarlet uniform, and a big-bosomed lady in a flamboyant feathered hat.
‘He’s got the fever,’ she said.
Jacob closed his eyes, and for a second, he saw his wife and his children playing in their country home in France.
‘Just shows, doctors are as vulnerable as the next man,’ said the bosun.
Benjamin Fry thought Jacob’s medical chest—now at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea—had carried the tools of his profession, in the same way a tradesman carries the tools of his trade. Jacques Rouchon did not attempt a foray into English to rectify what he knew to be a misinterpretation, so the error stood. Indeed, it was even upheld by the medical literature found in Jacob’s sack.
‘It’s a chance I’ve a spare room, vacated only this morning,’ said the large and exuberant lady. ‘If he has coin, you can bring him round.’
In Port Royal, reputedly the richest town in the English Indies, not only was every service the object of payment, but people expected to be paid in ready cash.
Du
ring Rouchon’s numerous jaunts with Jacob on Cow Island, he had spied the bulge of Jacob’s bourse under his shirt. So he was able to reassure the lady of Jacob’s solvency whether he lived or died. His level of English, however, only allowed him to make three-word sentences that reflected his bodily needs, such as we go eat, give me wine, you me go, and so on. So the planter’s gesturing was just as eloquent as his words when he said, ‘Oh, coin he has, Madame!’
Mrs Angela Evens was a Welsh-born matron and the respected widow of a tavern keeper. With the sale of her husband’s assets, she was able to purchase a relatively peaceful lodging house, just a stone’s throw away from the graveyard.
Rouchon, with his forthright air, was convincing enough for Mrs Evens to hail down a man with a cart who had been delivering barrels of beer. She ordered the man, whose name was Isaac, to deliver the sick “doctor” to her lodgings. The bosun continued into Customs House to report the loss of the Sally-Ann and most of the mates aboard, while Rouchon followed Jacob, slumped in the handcart, to his new lodgings.
*
At the height of his delirium, Delpech dreamt a Catholic mob was coming to lynch him. But the hundreds of people streaming by outside his second-floor window were in fact returning from the funeral of Port Royal’s most illustrious privateer, Captain Henry Morgan. The former governor of Jamaica had passed away on his plantation the day after Jacob collapsed. The clamour of revellers drinking and singing was enough to rouse the dead, and Delpech wondered at one point during the commotion for what reason he was lying in hell. He was not, of course, although the captain’s after-funeral celebrations would later indirectly bring Jacob grief of a distinctly mortal nature.
Jacques Rouchon visited the stone-built, three-storey lodging house every day around noon, for the first fortnight of Jacob’s distemper. During the first moments of lucidity, Delpech mustered all his strength to give the planter money to buy laudanum, to dull the pain in his belly and help him sleep. He had read that more than anything, a sick body needed rest to be able to resist the ailment and be cured.
He also handed Rouchon a list of ingredients with which to make a draught for the calenture. This consisted—according to The Surgeon’s Mate—of barley, two gallons of freshwater, liquorice juice, cloves, oil of vitriol spirit for his ailing head, and a spoonful of rose wine to take away the bitterness. Along with the doses of laudanum, the resulting decoction was about all Jacob could take down during the initial stages of his illness.
At the same time, other elements were combining that would pin Jacob down far longer than his present calenture and dysentery. These elements included Jacob’s taking laudanum, Jacques’s meeting up with Harry, and Morgan’s funeral that acted as a catalyst for vice in the shape of dice.
*
One Tuesday, a little over two weeks after he had collapsed in front of Customs House, Jacob at last was able to sit up and spoon down the chicken broth Mrs Evens had concocted specially for him. He felt alert now that he had not taken any laudanum since Sunday, having heard how easily it could take root in the seat of a man’s desire.
He was looking forward to seeing Rouchon, who usually showed up around noon. But noon came and went, as did the night, and the next day, without a sign of the planter. By the following Wednesday, Jacob prayed nothing untoward had befallen his friend, and he got to mulling over their last conversation together.
‘You have been most generous,’ Jacob had said. ‘You may well have saved my life.’
‘As you have saved mine, I might say,’ Rouchon had returned.
At the time, it had struck Jacob, albeit fleetingly, that Rouchon had not used the preterit, as one would on relating a past event such as the one on the Sally-Ann, when Jacob hauled the planter from the side of the hull. He had used the present perfect tense as if the event had just happened and was ongoing.
‘Although I don’t deserve it,’ he had continued, ‘’cause I have dabbled in the vice of dice, Monsieur Delpech. And the worst of it is that I won at first! Now I wish I’d lost.’
He had then related how, on the night of Captain Morgan’s funeral, he had run into Harry, who had taken him to a dicing house.
‘But I swear to God, it is not a place for a poor planter, and I fear I must soon leave, Monsieur Delpech, before it is the ruin of me.’ But Jacob had not realised how soon.
There was a knock at the door. Instead of Jacques Rouchon, in walked Mrs Evens with his broth, which was as good a consolation as any, now that he was recovering his appetite.
‘There you are, Doctor,’ she said, sliding the tray over his lap once he had managed to prop himself up against his pillows.
‘Thank you, Mrs Evens. You are so kind.’
The French doctor was a charming man, and she was not indifferent to his soft baritone voice and accent. But there were nevertheless practical matters to be addressed.
She picked up his bedpan, matron-like, and proceeded past a little round table dressed with flowers, to the window.
‘It is a fine day, Doctor,’ she said. Leaning her generous bust out of the window, she threw out the contents of the pan into the street below. Turning back into the room, with a smile she said, ‘Now that you are back among the living, Doctor, do you think you can pay me?’
‘Pay you?’ For a second, Jacob was taken aback, fearing the lady had misread his intentions.
‘For bed and board, Doctor,’ she said affably. ‘I can only go on feeding you if I have food in the larder, and for that, I’m going to need some rent.’
‘Oh, yes, of course, Mrs Evens, forgive me. I err have still a light head.’
How naïve he had been to imagine she had taken him in out of the goodness of her heart. He asked her what he owed her.
‘It’s seven shillings a week for the room, and three shillings for board, and a further shilling for care, which amounts to four crown and two shillings for the two weeks past, or four pieces of eight if you prefer.’
It was a hefty price to pay, he thought, considering that an indentured servant cost twenty pieces of eight, and that was for a three-year term. Yet it was a small price to pay for still being alive, although had he known the cost sooner, no matter how weak he was, he would certainly have chosen to stay in a more “godly” establishment. For the opposite wall often let through the intimate sighs and the most eccentric squeals of ladies and gentlemen in the clutches of their primal passions. He told Mrs Evens he would have some coin ready for her when she came back for the bowl. She exited the room with one eyebrow raised and her nostrils flared.
Once Jacob had finished his broth, he took the key hanging from his neck and reached across to the locked drawer where he kept his valuables. He pulled out the drawer and grabbed his plump little bourse. But the instant he did so, he knew something did not tally. His heart sank as he tipped up the sack. His eyes widened in shock, then horror, as one by one, instead of twenty-eight gold louis, an assortment of farthings and pennies fell into his hand. His hopes of boarding a ship to Europe were dashed. Not only that, he now found himself in debt.
Ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Mrs Evens’s large figure filled the doorway. She stepped into the room and looked down at the drawer still open, then at Jacob, whose gaunt face was an open book.
‘I knew it. He’s taken your coin, hasn’t he, Doctor?’
Jacob gave a nod. ‘I must see the governor,’ he said with incredulity.
‘With all due respect, you are in no state to go anywhere. And besides, your friend is gone.’
‘Gone? Why did you not tell me?’
‘Only just found out myself. My maid says she saw him hopping onto a ship to Lord knows where. He was with a man with a scar across his face.’
‘Harry,’ murmured Delpech, recalling how the English rigger had once nearly skinned the planter for his flesh, and then had introduced him to dice for the planter to be fleeced.
‘I did hear he was dicing, and losing. It’s commonplace round here, you know. They live it up and
goad each other on till there’s nothing left, and they’re back in debt and having to put out to sea again.’
‘So, as I am his creditor, I am also the loser.’
‘The only one who really wins is the tavern keeper. That’s why there are so many of them. You’re still going to have to cough up, though, Doctor, if you’ll pardon the expression.’
‘Madame, I have no other means,’ said Jacob, taking in the immediate implications of the theft.
‘You might try looking in your jacket, and if that’s not enough, you’ll have to write me out an IOU, Doctor. I do believe you to be a gentleman true to his word,’ she said, with one hand on her hip, the other hand pointing to his jacket on a hook behind the door.
‘Yes,’ said Jacob, remembering the gold escudo he had been given at Petit Goave. But it was only worth sixteen reals, or two pieces of eight. So he was obliged to make out an IOU.
*
By the end of September, Jacob had put some flesh back on his bones, and was strong enough to go for strolls around the town and its port. Being in Mrs Evens’s debt had obliged him to remain in her lodging house. He had, however, moved to a smaller room on the third floor which consisted of four bare walls with a single bed and a chest of drawers. She treated him kindly and agreed to continue to give him board and lodging in exchange for IOUs, which, by the time he was able to stand and walk about, amounted to five pieces of eight. And that did not include her deceased husband’s clothes that she insisted he wear, for she would not have a gentleman walk about town in tatters.
*
Thursday, 30 September, was no different than the previous days, except that, instead of wondering how he could pay his passage on board a ship to Europe, he found himself pondering over Mrs Evens’s proposition.
She had offered to let him stay on at her house. She would forget his debt and even pay for his medical instruments so that he could practice from home. In short, she was offering him freedom from debt in exchange for marriage.
Voyage of Malice Page 17