The Privateersman

by The Privateersman (retail) (epub)

  ‘Allan…’ one of them remonstrated.

  The man named Allan looked over his shoulder. ‘I’m putting him out,’ he joked, ‘don’t let anyone say I let him burn.’

  ‘You’d do better waving that thing at his widow!’

  ‘Happen I will before morning.’

  ‘She’ll be glad to be rid of him…’

  ‘Go give her the news, John.’

  The ring-leader shook his head. ‘No, well make her sing the Tea Deum in the morning,’ he said. At that moment Kite saw his face.

  ‘Let’s get out of here, Jacob,’ said Kite, shaking himself clear of the black man’s restraining grip and leading Jacob up the alley.

  ‘Where are we going, sah?’

  ‘To call on a lady.’

  The Tyrells’ house was in darkness as Kite and Jacob approached. Through the dark window glass on the ground floor he could see the internal shutters had been closed and he feared for the whereabouts of Sarah. Where had she been when her husband had been caught by the Patriot mob? He banged on the door and stood impatiently for some moments on the threshold. A silence had fallen now on Newport and Kite felt this was preternatural. It was broken by distant drunken laughter. Kite swore and beat on the door again, leaning forward to catch any sound from within.

  ‘Dere’s someone in dere, Cap’n,’ Jacob whispered. ‘I see the shutters move.’

  Kite stepped back and moved to the window Jacob indicated. ‘Its Captain William Kite, just arrived from Jamaica,’ he called in a low voice. ‘Let me in!’

  Then the shutter drew aside and Kite started as he stared into the face of the Tyrells’ housekeeper, Bessie Ramsden, her head swathed in a night-cap. He saw her turn about and a few minutes later heard the noise of bolts being drawn.

  ‘Oh, Cap’n, I’m so glad…’

  ‘Where’s your mistress?’ Kite cut in.

  ‘I don’t know, she went out looking for the master.’

  ‘Damnation! I beg your pardon, but where is she likely to have gone? Where did Mr Tyrell say he was going?’

  ‘He never came home tonight, sir…’

  ‘From the counting house?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘And is that where your mistress is likely to have gone to find him?’

  ‘Yes sir. We had word that the Patriots were on the rampage after what happened over in Boston last night.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Oh, they threw all the tea into Boston Harbour, sir, all dressed up as Mohicans…’

  ‘Yes, yes, but is there anywhere else Mistress Tyrell might have gone other than the counting house?’

  ‘Only the warehouse, sir, the master took a small consignment of tea out of a snow last week…’

  ‘Dear God! Have you a pistol and a sword, Bessie? Be quick!’

  ‘Here, come in sir…’

  In the hallway Kite saw the servants all armed with muskets. He turned and gestured to Jacob. ‘Here Jacob, arm yourself. We are going out after Mistress Tyrell, that old man’s wife.’ Kite turned to the house-keeper. ‘Bessie, I doubt you’ll be troubled until the morning but if I find the mistress, I’m taking her off my ship until this trouble dies down. he forbore saying more and took what he recognised as Arthur Tyrell’s small sword and a brace of pistols from a man-servant.

  ‘They’re loaded,’ the man-servant said, ‘Captain Kite. D’you want me to come with you?’

  ‘No, do you stay here and mind these ladies. If anyone wants to know now or later where your mistress is, tell them she left to find her husband and you haven’t seen her since. D’you understand me?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Good. Now come Jacob. We’ve no time to lose.’

  Kite walked swiftly back into the silent town. Ironically a clock now struck midnight, the chimes ringing out mournfully over the roof tops. A few lights still glimmered between the interstices in shutters and from one tavern the incongruous sound of riot sounded raucously into the night as a door opened and a patriot reveller made for the latrine. They came to the waterfront and the smouldering remains of Tyrell’s warehouse which still glowed as the breeze gently fanned the embers. In the area where once the carts had loaded there was no trace of Tyrell’s body and Kite heard Jacob muttering.

  ‘The white man is powerful bad,’ he said and Kite was compelled to agree with him. On the scene of Tyrell’s dreadful death and humiliation Kite paused and Jacob could scarce contain his unease, hopping from one leg to another like a boy eager to urinate.

  ‘Where the devil d’you think the monsters have taken him?’ Kite asked no-one and then he turned on his heel and made for the entrance to the counting house up a side street. The upper end window was that of Tyrell’s private office and looked over the harbour. It was dark, but Kite thought he could see a dim flickering within. Was that the start of another fire, or did it indicate some activity within? If so, was it more ‘patriotism’ or did it reveal Sarah’s whereabouts?

  Kite crossed the street and tried the door. It was locked and he bent to the keyhole. Again there was a that faint glimmer, like a single candle-flame somewhere in the interior. Kite turned his head and pressed his ear against the door. He was almost certain that he heard voices and, keeping his ear against the door he tapped it deliberately with his knuckles. The whispering stopped. He tapped again, then heard a shuffling as of someone approaching the door cautiously.

  Kite swallowed, then placing his mouth near the key hole called in a low voice, ‘it is William Kite, master of the Wentworth, newly arrived from Port Royal, Jamaica.’

  There was a short pause and then a man’s voice, tremulous with fear responded. ‘That is impossible…’

  ‘Borthwick? Is that you? Let me in, I am indeed William Kite…’

  ‘How can I be sure?’

  Kite thought for a moment, then asked, ‘d’you remember me asking who a certain man was when a gang of patriots tried to waylay me?’

  ‘Aye, if you are Captain Kite you will known whose name I gave.’

  ‘You told me the name was Rathburne.’

  ‘And who is the Mate of the Wentworth?’

  ‘John Corrie.’

  To his relief, Kite heard a key grind in the lock and the next moment the door was cracked open. Kite stood to show himself.

  ‘Who have you there?’ Borthwick asked quickly shoving the door closed again.

  ‘This is Jacob, Borthwick, my quartermaster from the Wentworth.’

  Again the door opened and both men slipped inside. ‘Where is Mistress Tyrell?’ Kite asked quickly and Borthwick jerked his head to an open door. It led, Kite knew, to a bay large enough for a single cart and from which valuables were brought into a strong room within the counting house through heavy double-doors onto the street along the side of the building.

  ‘Cap’n…!’ Jacob stood wrinkling his nose, the whites of his eyes alarmed in the semi-darkness. Kite could smell the burnt flesh and swallowed.

  ‘Wait here, Jacob.’

  In the loading bay stood a small flat-dray and on it, lit by a single candle, lay the mortal remains of Arthur Tyrell. Kite shuddered and retched, then saw Sarah. She stood pressed into a corner, immobile and staring through wide eyes at what had once been her husband.

  Borthwick shuffled in beside him. He pressed a handkerchief to his nose and mumbled, ‘I have been trying to persuade her that she cannot stay here all night, Captain Kite.’

  Kite nodded. ‘Thank you Borthwick, thank you. Do you leave the keys with Jacob…’

  ‘I cannot, sir, I cannot.’

  ‘Very well, then wait with Jacob.’ Borthwick turned and went out, leaving Kite with Sarah. There was no obvious sign that she recognised him, or even knew he was there and he very slowly moved towards her, his hands outstretched.

  ‘Sarah,’ he called in a low voice. ‘Sarah, ’tis me, William… William Kite… Sarah?’ As he drew closer her eyes never left the charred corpse, nor did she appear to blink, though her cheeks were wet with tears. Yet s
he sensed him looming over her, for slowly she sank down onto her haunches, one arm coming up to shelter her head as though he was about to beat her with a stick. A faint whimper came from her, but it was clear she was insensible to his identity, though he murmured both their names. He crouched beside her, but still she remained withdrawn and his one attempt to touch her resulted in a swiftly indrawn breath, so that he moved back, perplexed.

  He stood and, looking reluctantly at Tyrell’s remains, had a thought. A whip stood alongside the dray, leant against the wall by the last driver. Moving slowly he took it up and then moved closer to Sarah. As soon as she was within arms’ length he swung the whip and knocked over the candle. It guttered and went out, a moment later, as Sarah began to scream, he took her in his arms.

  ‘Borthwick!’ he called, aware that a flicker of flame ran along a wisp of straw on the board of the flat-dray, ‘bring water, quick!’

  ‘Oh, oh, oh…’ Sarah was trembling in his arms as he gathered her up. Somewhere Borthwick stumbled and threw the remains of a jug of drinking water over the tiny fire and then in the next room the snap of flint of steel was soon conjured into a new light.

  ‘Come Sarah…’ With infinite patience, Kite led her out of the loading bay and into the main counting-house.

  ‘I should take her upstairs, sir, you can have some privacy there. I shall make some…’ Borthwick had been about to say tea, but Jacob rose to the occasion.

  ‘We’ll make rum-punch, sah. Do you light the Cap’n up dem stairs Massah Borthwick.’

  ‘Thank you Jacob,’ Kite said as the clerk complied and he tenderly shepherded Sarah up the flight of stairs to Tyrell’s private office. Here it seemed, she began to come-to, blinking and looking about her, reaching out to touch a familiar object: Tyrell’s inkwell, his tray of pens, the edge of a pile of papers. Slowly she made a circuit of his desk and then she looked up and seemed to see Kite for the first time, for she started, then stepped forward and, with her face a mask, raked her hand across his face.

  ‘Sarah!’ he staggered backwards, blood pouring from his cheek where her rings had cut him. It was a curious repeat of their first encounter when she had struck him with her riding-crop. Into Kite’s outraged consciousness swam Tyrell’s veiled allusions to his wife’s high state of nerves, hints of instability, and now, Kite thought, of madness.

  ‘Sarah!’ He put his hand up to staunch the bleeding, and stared at her as she slowly realised what she had done.

  ‘William…? Is it you? It cannot be…’ She began to shake, tears suddenly poured from her eyes, not the suppressed weeping of her lonely vigil, but a full-blown and lachrymose collapse. Now she clung to him and slowly exhausted herself, voiding herself of the horrors of the night, as he leaned against Tyrell’s desk and soothed her with soft, shushing noises, all the while stroking her lustrous dark hair.

  At last, as though aware that the crisis had been passed, Jacob came up the stairs with steaming hot rum-punch, leaving the jug with them as he retreated below again. ‘There was a boat, Captain,’ he said as his head reached the level of the upper floor. ‘I saw a boat tied up near where we landed. We can take that out to the ship when you are ready. There’s no need to wait until the morning.’

  ‘Thank you Jacob. Give us a few more minutes…’

  After a period during which Kite thought Sarah had fallen asleep, she stirred. ‘William?’

  ‘Yes, my dear; it is me. We arrived this evening…’ He handed her a small tankard of the punch and she clasped it between both hands.

  ‘Tonight of all nights,’ she said, sipping the hot liquid.

  ‘Yes, tonight of all nights.’

  ‘The madness is an infection caught from Boston.’

  ‘So Mrs Ramsden explained.’ Kite took up his own punch and felt the warm glow expand in his guts.

  ‘And Arthur would not lie low… Oh, God, do you know what they did to him, William?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I do. I landed just as they finished tarring him…’

  Kite wanted to make some excuse, to explain why he had not rescued Tyrell, but she sipped the punch again and went on, ‘I saw it from this window,’ she gestured behind her. ‘There had been muttering all day, after the news came from Boston. This evening a drummer went round the town, just like in Providence the night they burnt the Government schooner. Arthur was restless and in the end he said he was going out. I begged him not to be foolhardy, but he insisted. “All my life’s work lies in that warehouse,” he said and I argued that that was not only stupid, but untrue. His profits lay in the bank, in our house, in our property along the waterfront and our shares in ships at sea, but he would have none of it. “It is a matter of principle,” he shouted. “The law shall not give way to he mob!” and then he was putting on his cloak and hat and I said that I was going with him. He told me to stay, that you would look after me, that you had promised, but I said that whatever you had promised, you were not here…’ She lifted the tankard again.

  Kite said nothing; all that day he had been beating up and down outside the harbour in Rhode Island Sound, wondering why the confounded pilots were ignoring his signals. Now he knew why.

  ‘After he left the house,’ Sarah continued, ‘I followed him, catching him up before he reached Main Street. He was angry with me, then he took my hand and we came here. We were seen of course. They were watching for us, I think. We heard them calling out, “Here he is! Here’s Tea-Tax Tyrell and his two-timing trull!”

  ‘At first only a few of the waterfront loiterers followed us, but by the time we reached the door below, there was a crowd assembling and once we were inside and found Borthwick here, Arthur made me promise to stay here. Before many more minutes had passed the crowd had become a mob. They were like animals, surrounding us and shouting their filthy abuse, people I have known all my life… Arthur was very brave; he opened the door and went out onto the step and asked them their business. They wanted him to open the warehouse and surrender the tea, so that they could brew it in the harbour as they had done in Boston. I think that had he done so they would forgiven and forgotten his Toryism and have accepted he had changed his politics, but Arthur could not take the easy way out of this cruel dilemma and he refused to bow to coercion.’

  Kite remained silent, watching her and thinking how beautiful she was as she set down the empty tankard, her eyes blazing with indignation and her breast heaving with emotion. She drew herself up and her voice rose a little, cracking with the intensity of her feelings. ‘He had made me promise that whatever happened… whatever happened… I would stay here,’ she repeated, as though the knowledge exculpated and, at the same time, burdened her.

  ‘He walked across the street with his keys to the warehouse, a great ring of them. I could see them gleaming in the lamps that people held up as they all fell silent. I wanted Arthur to throw open the doors of the warehouse and tell them to help themselves. The mob grew silent in anticipation, it seemed, of him doing this, but as they closed round him he drew back his arm and made to throw the keys over their heads into the harbour.’ She paused, shaking her head. ‘Then someone jumped up and caught them. John Rathburne, I think it was, and Arthur was pushed and shoved up against the door. The mob cheered and I lost sight of him, then I saw the door open and then close… It all grew silent again. I did not know what was happening until I smelt smoke. They set fire to the far end, the seawards end of the warehouse first. It was full of sugar. God knows what they did to him in there, but they stripped him…’

  Sarah paused a moment, but she had control of herself now and went on calmly. ‘They stripped him and tarred him and, in place of the chicken feathers they are so fond of, they threw tea all over him and drove him back into the street and set fire to him…’

  ‘I saw the rest, Sarah…’

  ‘But why, William? Why did they do that to an old man?’

  ‘To unite them all, my dear. They are all complicit now, accessories after the fact, and though no-one will ever be arraigned
for murder, all their lives have been touched by the common crime.’

  ‘John Rathburne did it, he is their leader.’

  ‘I know, Sarah, and tomorrow we must take counsel, but tonight we must get you to a place of safety, the Wentworth. Come, I will send Borthwick home and he may let Bessie know you are safe with me. Let us get some sleep. Come.’

  Kite led her down the stairs and Borthwick put her cloak about her shoulders. Kite told the clerk his intentions. ‘If you can,’ he said, ‘return here for ten o’clock in the morning, but do not, I beg you Borthwick, run any risks.’

  ‘I won’t, Captain.’

  They stepped out into the now silent street. Smoke and heat still wafted across the street from the burnt-out warehouse and the dying embers glowed here and there, under the gentle impetus of the light breeze. Behind them Jacob emerged and Borthwick ground the keys in the lock.

  ‘Good night, Ma’am,’ he said, ‘good night Captain.’

  ‘Ain’t nothing good about it,’ mumbled Jacob cocking the pistols. ‘Follow me, Cap’n,’ he said and led them obliquely across the street towards the wharves that jutted out from the waterfront.

  A few minutes later Sarah sat in the stern of the stolen boat while Jacob and Kite each plied an oar. Answering the challenge from Zachariah Harper, they pulled alongside and with some difficulty in the dark Sarah was man-handled up the curving tumblehome of the Wentworth’s side. As they clambered aboard Jacob kicked the boat adrift.

  ‘Nobody will know who took that boat,’ he said, handing the pistols to Kite.

  ‘No, but they’ll wake up to see an unexpected arrival lying at anchor in the harbour,’ Kite said.

  Watching Kite escort Sarah to his cabin, Harper murmured, ‘Well I’ll be God-damned…’

  ‘You’d better be for him, Mister Harper,’ Jacob said, ‘’Cos he’s as angry as a five-legged hornet!’

  Chapter Nine

  Last Rites

  Kite had left word that he was to be called at six o’clock and Bandy Ben found him wrapped in blankets on the deck of the cabin, his cot occupied by a remarkably beautiful woman.