The Privateersman

by The Privateersman (retail) (epub)

  ‘Cap’n, sir. Hot water.’

  Kite groaned; his body ached from lying on the deck. Then slowly the events of the previous day reinvaded his consciousness: the long hours of beating up and down off the Beaver’s Tail, the tense passage of the narrows and then the terrible events beside the blazing warehouse culminating in Tyrell’s scorched corpse and finally poor Sarah’s ordeal.

  At the thought of Sarah he threw off the blankets and rose to his feet. She lay in his cot like a beautiful but broken doll, fast asleep, her mouth slightly open, her hair tousled and her face and clothes fouled by sinister black smears. He caught the scent of her but it was impossible to avoid the smell of burnt flesh that hung about her dishevelled clothes and it occurred to him that she herself must have borne Tyrell’s corpse into the loading bay.

  He shook his head, turned to the hot water and shaved. When he hand finished his ablutions he drew on his working clothes, the oldest of his coats that he wore at sea, and an old glazed hat which fitted tightly enough to withstand the odd gust of wind. Round his waist he buckled Tyrell’s hanger and, bending a moment over his desk, scribbled a note for Sarah. Then he quietly left the cabin and, encountering Ben told him to leave the lady until she woke and then to give her every attention.

  ‘She is a person of importance, Ben, do you treat her kindly for she has had a terrible experience.’ Ben grunted acknowledgement and Kite added. ‘While you wait for her to wake, be a good fellow and see what you can do to clean up my best coat and breeches.’

  On deck it was still dark. He found Corrie on watch and explained what had happened. The mate whistled through his teeth. ‘Zachariah said the fire looked bad, but I had no idea it was anything but misfortune…’

  ‘Well, John, our consignee is dead, his warehouse is destroyed and his widow is asleep in my cot. I daresay we shall be able to sell our cargo to someone else and I shall attend to the matter later this morning. For now, however, I should be obliged if you will provide me with a boat as soon as possible. I have a mind to be ashore before the town is much a-stir. At ten o’clock send it back in for me. When Mistress Tyrell awakes, tell her I shall be back aboard at ten to take her ashore I shall want Jacob turned out to accompany me.’

  ‘Zachariah wants to come with you, too.’

  ‘That’s good of him, but do you not want him on board?’

  ‘I can manage an anchor watch…’

  ‘I don’t known how long we’ll be, John.’

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Half an hour later, as the first glimmer of a wintry dawn threw the buildings of Newport into a sharpening silhouette, Kite stood again where he had witnessed the last moments of his friend. He walked into the charred timbers and heaps of ash that were all that remained of Tyrell’s goods. Her and there embers still glowed and the ash was still hot enough to warm his feet through the soles of his boots, but the sharp frost had cooled much of the previous night’s conflagration. Smashed glass lay in piles, where bottles of wine and rum had exploded, while piles of barrel and cask hoops were all that remained of the large quantity of rum and beer Tyrell had had stored ready for shipping. Both were either distilled or brewed in the town and the incendiaries had damaged Newport’s economy with a wantonness that shocked Kite. Of the offending tea there remained no trace.

  Tyrell’s warehouse was the last building on the waterside before it cut back in a dock, but on its far side rose the adjacent store owned by McFee, Browne and Kent. The nameboard announcing the owners was defaced by bubbled paintwork but, remarkably enough, it had not caught fire. A few buckets lay where they had been thrown at the end of the incident and the heavy frost that whitened the sloping roof showed where it had been thoroughly and constantly doused with water. There was no doubt that not only was the burning of Tyrell’s warehouse arson, but it had been meticulously planned and carried out with great discipline.

  A dog began to bark and somewhere a door slammed. Kite turned. A man was walking down the street that ran along the waterfront, he regarded the unfamiliar pile of ash and ruin that occupied the vacant lot and then noticed Kite and looked away. Standing still, Kite felt the heat burning through his boots and quit the site. It was too early to expect Borthwick to be at the counting house, but Kite checked, then walked off towards the Tyrells’ house.

  He found Mrs Ramsden a-bustle and obviously relieved when she opened the door to him. ‘Why Captain Kite ! Did you find the Mistress?’

  ‘Yes. Bessie,’ she’s safe aboard the Wentworth, but did you not hear from Borthwick last night?’

  The housekeeper shook her head. ‘We dursn’t open the door to anyone if it wasn’t you, sir. A man saying he was Borthwick came to the door, but I didn’t reckon it was him, sir and it was dreadfully late…’

  ‘Very well, very well,’ soothed Kite holding up his hand. ‘Pray do not distress yourself on that account, but I am afraid there have been terrible things happening in Newport.’

  He told her as sparingly as he could, but she was a curious and persistent woman and, despite the floods of tears and shrieks of horror he could not, in the end, conceal the full horror of what had happened. By the time he had finished they had migrated to the kitchen and Mrs Ramsden felt the need for a tumbler of Tyrell’s best rum.

  ‘What are we to do, Captain? Oh,’ she went on without giving Kite the opportunity of replying, but dabbed her eyes with her apron and refilled her glass, ‘what a great mercy you came, sir! Had you not turned up, I don’t know what would have happened to the Mistress, really I don’t.’

  ‘No. The pity of it is Bessie,’ said Kite, ‘that had I not met contrary winds yesterday I should have been in port twelve hours earlier and might have saved your Master.’

  ‘Oh yes, sir… To think of him being burned to death, oh, sir…’ And she burst again into floods of tears. He waited until she had calmed down and then she repeated her first question. ‘What are we to do, sir?’

  Kite shrugged. ‘I am not certain but I think we must see what transpires during the day. I hope the spirit of revolt will have had its fill of death and destruction, but it may not be so. There is, it seems a very persistent faction in the town which is hell-bent on mischief. Tell me, Bessie, what do you know of the man named Rathburne?’

  ‘Oh, he is the worst of them, Captain, that I can assure you. John Peck Rathburne is one of Whipple’s men, have you heard of Captain Abraham Whipple, sir?’

  ‘I heard that he burned the Gaspée, yes, and I have marked him to be the ring-leader of the active Patriots of Newport.’

  ‘Oh, he is, sir. The Master says… Oh, sir forgive me…’

  ‘That is all right, Bessie.’ Kite waited while she composed herself again.

  ‘The Master,’ she went on, sniffling as she spoke, ‘used to say that he was the one man in Newport who was capable of real mischief. That was after the Liberty business.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘Oh, it was years ago, back in sixty-eight, I think, some business over a ship called the Liberty that belonged to Mr Hancock over in Boston. She had been taken by the Custom House officers for some problem over the duty that Mr Hancock should have paid or something… It was rather confusing, sir, seeing as how Mr Tyrell said, and I heard him say this, that the Crown officers were acting provocatively by strictly enforcing a regulation they had normally ignored. But Mr Hancock had annoyed them and I think they wanted matters done according to the regulation…’ Mrs Ramsden had confused herself, but Kite could visualise the problem. It was probably a waiving of some procedure such as a strict entering of a ship for outwards clearance when the master cleared inwards at the Custom House. No doubt it had become a common practice to roll the two acts into one until, on this occasion, the Crown officers challenged the master of Mr Hancock’s vessel, the Liberty, and accused him of not conforming to the letter of the regulation. Such things were done in Liverpool with a master who was a persistent problem to the authorities. But that, it seemed, was
only half the story. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Well, Captain, the Custom House officers used the Liberty like the Gaspée…’

  ‘You mean they made her a revenue vessel?’ Kite interrupted, incredulous at the inherent provocation of turning a seized vessel into a revenue cruiser.

  ‘Yes, but all this was two or three years before the Gaspée business. Anyway, in the spring of the next year, sixty-nine that would be, the Liberty was lying here, off Newport. This raised a great commotion and they called a meeting and that John Rathburne was at the head of it, holloaing about Liberty being a matter for Americans and that it was all wrong for a ship with that name to be in King George’s service and, oh, I don’t known what all…

  ‘Anyway, the upshot of it all was that they went out and burned her, said she wasn’t British anyway. In fact I do believe that Mr Hancock himself came over from Boston and told them he didn’t give a fiddle for the ship, what with him being the richest man in the whole of Massachussets.’ Bessie Ramsden finished with a stout blowing of her nose which, Kite rightly concluded, signified she had overcome her moment of weakness. ‘So there you are, Captain, that’s Captain John Peck Rathburne for you.’

  ‘A man with a fondness for burning things.’

  ‘Aye, quite.’ Mrs Ramsden pounded both hands upon her knees and rose to her feet. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me sir… By-the-by,’ she asked suddenly solicitous, ‘have you broken your fast? I’ll wager not and if you have it’ll only have been that dreadful fare they serve on ships.’

  ‘Oh, ’tis not so bad when you’ve got used to it.’

  ‘Here, you sit down, sir, I’ve a fine ham, and we’ll mash some tea and stir some porridge…’

  ‘And the condemned man ate a hearty breakfast,’ Kite murmured to himself as he relaxed, hoping that aboard the Wentworth, they were looking after Sarah.

  Kite reached Tyrell’s counting house exactly as the church clock struck nine. Borthwick was already there but he shrugged his shoulders when Kite asked after his colleagues. ‘The word will have been passed to them to stay away, Captain.’

  ‘And you, do you wish to stay away, Borthwick.’

  ‘I know the distinction between my duty and my inclination, Captain. Besides,’ Borthwick wrinkled his nose, ‘there is the matter of Mr Tyrell’s remains.’

  ‘Yes, I have already considered that. I have been at the Tyrell’s house this morning and before I left I sent word for a grave to be prepared for mid-day. Do you see that Mr Tyrell’s attorney is summoned to the house with Tyrell’s will and testamentary papers by two o’clock this afternoon. Now, before I leave you to go off to the ship again, I wish you to quietly see if there’s a merchant who will take in three hundred and seventy tones of sugar and molasses, a small quantity of Spanish laces and similar wares.’

  ‘Very well, Captain, but they’ll offer low prices.’

  ‘Then we’ll sail for New York and sell it there.’

  Borthwick sighed and nodded. ‘This is a sad day, Captain Kite.’

  ‘Tell that to your fellow townsfolk, Mr Borthwick.’

  When he returned to the Wentworth, Kite found Sarah awake and dressed, sitting at his desk drinking chocolate. She rose angrily and accused him of abandoning her, but he swiftly responded.

  ‘Would it have been proper to linger in the same accommodation as you, Sarah, beyond the time I had been called? Come my dear, this will be a difficult day.’

  He watched her face soften. ‘I was frightened without you, William. When I woke I did not know where you were, heavens I scarcely knew where I was myself, until I remembered.’

  ‘Have you eaten?’ he asked swiftly changing the subject.

  She nodded. ‘Yes, that odd little creature brought me hot burgoo and, as you see, I am completing my breakfast with this chocolate.’

  ‘That is Bandy Ben,’ Kite said, smiling for the first time and she hesitantly smiled back. ‘You look better for your night’s sleep. In fact,’ he said slowly, ‘you look uncommonly handsome.’

  She did not hear the compliment. ‘I cannot rid myself of the thought that with Arthur’s death…’ She hesitated, unable to bring herself to utter the words.

  ‘Set those thoughts aside, Sarah, at least for the time being. Now, pray attend me and hear me out, for I have much to tell you.’

  It was odd, Kite thought afterwards, how events had conspired to throw them together so that from the moment of his return to Rhode Island, their fates were inextricably entwined. There was never a formal proposal or any other of the regular conventions of courtship. She fell in with his plan not because he had assumed responsibility for her, but because it suited her and they were of one mind. For Sarah outrage at the public murder of her husband, far more than the passion she felt for William Kite, made her aid and abet him. For Kite, friendship and respect for Arthur Tyrell obliged him to protect the dead man’s helpless widow, while the commercial loss staring him in the face led him to acquire her help in solving their mutual problems of solvency. But both knew there was a distant objective behind this pragmatic union, and both knew that this governed the nature of their conduct upon that fateful day. It also enabled them to withstand the malicious intent of others who had already matured their own plan for the final disposal of the House of Tyrell.

  Shortly before noon on the 19th December 1773, the townsfolk of Newport were treated to a pitiful and dismal spectacle. A flat-dray, drawn by two nags and led by a huge black seaman wearing a cutlass, creaked its way up Main Street from the waterfront. Exposed on the dray lay what looked like a twisted and blacked log, such as one might pull out of a fire that had otherwise burnt out. It was scarcely recognisable as once having been a man, and gave off the sickly sweet smell of roasted pork. Behind the dray came a tall English sea-captain in blue broadcloth, his cocked hat beneath his left arm, the glint of a silver-hilted sword at his waist and the scabbard-iron tap-tapping his gleaming hessian boots. He wore his hair unpomaded, his heavy clubbed queue bound at the nape of his neck by a black ribbon. He held his head up and his level grey eyes stared about him so that those who stood and watched, dropped their gaze.

  Upon his right arm walked Mistress Tyrell. Her voluptuous figure set off in watered grey silk over which she wore a black cloak the hood of which was thrown defiantly back to reveal a cascade of hair tumbling about her shoulders. Like her escort, her head was also held high but she looked neither to right, nor to left. Her eyes were fixed upon the disgusting sight of the body of her husband which shuddered as the dray rumbled over the uneven surface of the street.

  Behind Captain Kite walked Mr Borthwick in his common garb of black and grey, his arm supporting Bessie Ramsden who was attired entirely in black. Four of the Tyrell’s servants followed and the rear was brought up by a large and conspicuously ugly man, dressed in similar style to the captain, in a blue coat, apparel instantly recognisable to every person, man, woman or child in that seafaring place, as the common clothes of a merchant sea-officer. He carried in the crook of his arm a brightly polished blunderbuss, such as merchant vessels carry to deter thieves.

  For the most part the people of Newport stood silently downcast, as though acknowledging their collective shame. The men removed their hats, a number of the women sobbed silently and the smaller children peered from behind their parents’ legs scarce comprehending the grim sight. Only once, as the improvised cortege passed a tavern, was there heard and echo of the events of the previous night when a group of men, obviously appraised of the approach of the dolorous little procession, spilled out onto the street.

  Several had pots in their hands, others tobacco pipes and three wore their hats. Kite saw Rathburne standing slightly apart, hat on head and tapping his right boot with a cane. His face, a handsome one, Kite acknowledged, wore an offensive smirk and he stared at Kite quite unabashed. Kite felt Sarah’s grip on his arm tighten. He held Rathburne’s gaze until he could no longer do so without turning his head and he knew in that short period that he had made a mort
al enemy. Sarah’s grip eased as they passed clear of the group of men but behind them Kite heard the noise of exaggerated expectoration and Sarah’s grasped him again and he heard her indrawn breath.

  ‘Steady, my love,’ he whispered and they slowly walked on.

  In their rear a disrespectful and murmur rose, then there was a laugh and as Kite guessed, having given offence as they intended, the gang withdrew inside the tavern.

  There was only one person in the church other than the officiating incumbent, a man named Milton who, Kite was to learn later, was Tyrell’s attorney. The funeral was short, swift and formal, spoken like the reading of the articles of agreement between a ship’s master and his potential crew, Kite thought. Nor was the interment longer than was necessary, a circumstance hastened by a shower of snow driven in by a cold wind blowing from the north again. Afterwards, the little group of mourners slipped quietly away, traversing the back streets and heading out of the town towards the Tyrells’ house. Here, irrespective of rank or station, Sarah had bid them assemble while some refreshments were served.

  ‘On behalf of Mistress Tyrell, I should like to thank you for your loyal support after the tragic events of the last few hours. It remains to be seen what the future holds for us, but I am certain that what provision can be made for you, will be made.’

  ‘Thank you all,’ added Sarah, and she left the room, pausing only to address the attorney Milton. Kite saw the man nod, indicate his brief case, pick it up and follow her. Kite joined them in the withdrawing room where he asked her, ‘whom do you wish to attend, my dear?’

  Sarah looked at Milton. ‘Mr Milton? What is your advice?’

  ‘Besides yourself, Ma’am, Captain William Alexander Kite, Mistress Elizabeth Jane Ramsden, Mister Solomon Lemuel Borthwick and Captain Thomas Edward Spenser Gray.’

  Kite called them in and they stood awkwardly about Sarah, who had sat on a single upright chair opposite Milton who was standing by a second. Kite recognised it as the one Tyrell himself favoured. ‘We seem to be one short,’ said Milton, counting them.