The Privateersman

by The Privateersman (retail) (epub)

  ‘Join the Royal Navy? No, no.’ Kite sat and pulled on his left boot. Then he pulled on the other while Sarah put her hands on her hips and shook her head.

  ‘For God’s sake William, tell me what is on your mind and which, it seems you are too terrified to admit for fear that I will faint, or something. I assure you that I shall not. I have learned to have a strong stomach, one that I venture to suggest may even tolerate the perils of the deep.’

  Kite stood and stamped his feet into his boots. ‘Very well, Sarah. But you must understand that if you wish to delay our marriage as a consequence…’

  ‘Tell me, confound you!’

  ‘I own another vessel, the schooner Spitfire. Do you recall her?’

  ‘How could I forget,’ Sarah murmured.

  ‘She is in the Antilles and, should matters go as we anticipate, there is every possibility of fitting her as a…’

  ‘A privateer. Of course. I should have thought of it myself. They will issue letters of marque to put an end to Colonial trade and if you do not fit out your ships as privateers you will have lost all chances of profit, for you will not be trading with rebellious colonies tomorrow any more than rebellious colonies will trade with you today!’

  Kite nodded. ‘I see you understand me perfectly. As for yourself…’

  ‘But you do not understand me, William. I shall come with you in Spitfire. I can acquire such skills as may make me useful. I shall be an apt pupil, I promise.’

  Kite paused in the act of drawing on his coat. It no longer had any pretence at being smart, but it would have to do. ‘There is no doubt in your mind, is there?’

  ‘None whatsoever. Our souls were linked long ago, William, when our fates were intertwined. This is but the outcome.’

  They embraced and Kite asked, ‘and shall our bodies find a compatibility of such a niceness, Sarah Tyrell?’

  ‘Only while our minds remain in such perfect harmony,’ she breathed, adding, ‘but not yet, William, not just yet. I must shake the dust,’ she paused, ‘and the ashes of this place from my feet.’

  ‘To Boston then. Milton may find us there with his papers and deeds. Shall you have him sell this place?’

  ‘Yes. Or Rathburne’s Patriots will burn it.’

  ‘I think not. Rathburne’s ambitions may be such as to tempt him to sequester it. In the name of Patriotism of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Part Three

  Vengeance

  Chapter Eleven

  A Cargo of Flour

  ‘My dear friends,’ Wentworth said, smiling broadly and bending over Sarah’s bosom until his wife’s disapproving eye burnt into his back, ‘I have excellent news for which I know you have been waiting these past weeks…’

  ‘When is she due?’ Kite asked, leaping up at Wentworth’s awaited arrival.

  ‘Patience, patience.’ Wentworth settled himself in his chair and accepted the tea his wife passed him. ‘’Tis unpleasantly humid today, don’t you think Mrs Kite?’

  ‘I think sir, that were you sitting as close to my husband as you are to me you would judge it to be getting hotter by the moment.’

  ‘Oh, you do treat me so damnably bad, Mrs Kite,’ Wentworth said, pulling a face.

  ‘But not as badly as I shall, sir,’ remarked Mrs Wentworth with as much forced humour as she could muster. ‘Nor as badly as Captain Kite,’ she added looking up at Kite.

  ‘And do you sit down Kite, do. Please. Matters are very trying at present, with all the uncertainty in Boston, I pray you don’t add to my troubles by standing up and waving your arms about in that remonstrating manner.’

  ‘I am not waving my arms about, Wentworth…’

  ‘No, but you look as though you might be in a moment or two.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Wentworth, what is the news of the Spitfire? When is she due,’ an exasperated Kite asked.

  ‘Sit down. And I shall tell you!’ said Wentworth brightly.

  ‘He is teasing you, Captain,’ Mrs Wentworth explained. ‘He is like a child when the fancy takes him. You have no recourse but to excuse him.’

  Wentworth turned to Sarah. ‘Do you think me like a child, Mrs Kite.’

  ‘Very like a child, sir.’

  ‘There,’ sighed Wentworth, ‘then I shall sulk like a child.’

  ‘And Captain Kite will have to beat you like a child,’ Mrs Wentworth added, not without a hint off glee, as if in expectation of Kite rising and carrying out the chastisement. She nodded at Kite who had sat down but who remained poised expectantly on the edge of his chair. The banter was amusing to a degree, but the long weeks of waiting in Antigua had not been an unblemished pleasure and the constant presence of Captain and Mrs William Kite had strained relations with Mrs Wentworth. Her husband did not greatly care, if he noticed anything amiss which is to be doubted, but Sarah seemed to have swept down out of a New England winter with an overwhelmingly cool elegance that even the heat of Antigua could not melt. The round of social engagements with which Mrs Wentworth had at first encouraged them to occupy themselves had palled once it was obvious that the men of St John’s, and in particular the officers of the garrison, were profoundly sensible of Mrs Kite’s wonderfully voluptuous charms. Having been herself a garrison lady during her first marriage, Mrs Wentworth began to perceive that she was eclipsed by Sarah. This, and other petty differences, all of which demonstrated the plain fact that the two wives had absolutely nothing in common, produced a coolness between them.

  Kite himself was sick of idleness. At their departure from Newport, he had not thought the months would have passed so slowly nor so little have been achieved. Having seen Sarah and those of her servants who wished it removed into Boston, Kite had paid off the Wentworth’s crew from his own private funds, obtaining a half-hearted promise from a few of them that if and when he returned there in the Spitfire, they would rejoin him. He had told them he would be pleased if they did so but, so uncertain were the times, that he urged them to look after their own interests first. He had other matters with which to preoccupy himself and Sarah with, such that his return in Spitfire seemed to be too distant to worry about.

  The settlement of Sarah’s affairs, and the winding up of her interests in her late husband’s business, proved a long-winded matter. Twice they had had to leave their lodgings in Boston and ride back to Newport to sign documents at Milton’s chambers, a trip that was far from pleasant, given the inflamed mood of the countryside.

  To their more personal satisfaction and dispensing with the prolonged tedium of formal mourning, they had published their banns in Boston and married quietly, sustained by their self-preoccupation as lovers through the tedium and imperfections of their long enforced exile. Neither of them liked Boston, nor did they enter into society in any sense, though Sarah had several friends among the town’s population with whom they occasionally dined. The newly-weds were in no position to reciprocate, nor did they feel moved to foster acquaintanceship amid the prevailing atmosphere of uncivilised disorder that dominated Boston. The majority of the citzenry inveighed by one means or another against British tyranny, with broadsheets, newspapers and street-corner gossip everywhere encouraging civil disobedience against the authority of the Crown. Evidence of this was produced at every turn, but centred chiefly upon the troops bivouacked on Boston Common. Such winter quarters contrasted badly with the cosy homes of the Bostonians and while their officers managed to secure lodgings, the common soldiers shivered in their tents, for it was as much a matter of principle for the Bostonians to refuse tea, as to refuse payment for billeting private infantrymen.

  Kite had seen Samuel Adams once and had thought of seeking a confrontation with him over the Wentworth, but he had been prevented by Sarah who counselled caution and inconspicuity until they again better controlled their own affairs. Nevertheless they once dined with Governor Hutchinson through the agency of a friend of the Tyrells’, and Kite laid before him the circumstances of the illegal seizure of the Wentworth. Hutchins
on promised ‘to see what could be done’, but Kite soon realised that the man was losing his powers thanks to the damaging effect of revelations from his private correspondence, which had fallen into the wrong hands and had been maliciously circulated by the Patriot party during the previous year. Moreover, rumours were circulating that Hutchinson’s civil authority would soon pass to General Thomas Gage, the military commander, and in May these predictions came to pass when it was known Hutchinson was to sail for England.

  To add to their personal uncertainty, it soon became clear that no-one in Newport was going to bid for the Tyrell’s house, as Kite had guessed. Though unwilling to do so, he and Sarah decided to offer it to Milton at a peppercorn rent, to prevent it falling into the hands of Rathburne or his ilk. With what Kite afterwards described as ‘a touching display of affected reluctance’, the attorney finally agreed to taking a lease on the property in November and Mrs Ramsden had agreed to stay on in the house pending Milton’s decision as to whether to remove himself into it, or to acquire suitable tenants.

  As for the Kites, having spent Christmas of 1773 trudging the streets of Boston seeking lodgings, they were in more comfortable circumstances a year later. Inviting some company to join them in a modest dinner party in their lodgings, they repaid some of the kindness and hospitality they had benefited from themselves. Kite had written to Wentworth, outlining his intentions, but Wentworth had replied that until a state of rebellion broke out, ‘a circumstance I very much doubt will occur, such a thing being so contrary to good sense and so damaging to trade,’ he could and would employ the Spitfire in a profitable manner. ‘She is not a vessel of any great capacity, but her speed makes her useful,’ he had added, concluding his reply with the remark that, ‘there is such a great deal of money to be made at the moment that I should be reluctant to relinquish the vessel and in view of your loss of the uninsured Wentworth, it would not be in your interest to curtail her useful voyages for three months at the earliest.’

  The remark had raised no apprehensions in Kite’s mind at the time. He had become reconciled to frustration; inertia begets inertia and he had discovered great pleasure and diversion in Sarah’s love-making. Nor did she seem unduly troubled; for her the long years of devoted but lack-lustre marriage could at last be set aside and she found Kite a man of consistent and pleasing energy. Otherwise, to combat ennui and to wipe-out the shame of his disarming by Rathburne, Kite had taken fencing lessons from a rather indigent army officer who, for a little private income to fund his habit at the gaming tables, gave private tuition. Most of his clientele were Tory gentlemen aware that a nodding acquaintance with self-defence might come in handy in the coming months. Under this tutelage Kite had rapidly improved his elementary technique, learned as a boy with a single-stick.

  It had been late March before the last transactions were concluded which terminated the business enterprise of Tyrell and Co. The residual property and assets had been transferred to Borthwick, Borthwick and Co, established by Tyrell’s chief clerk and his brother, a sea-captain from Providence. Kite, having managed to make himself useful to the extent of acting as agent for a number of Boston merchants who were anxious about the future, was at last ready to leave for Antigua and had secured a passage aboard the brig Savage. He had carried south to the West Indies a number of commissions undertaken on behalf of several parties, carrying letters of credit to Wentworth and others in Antigua, and securing measures to prevent losses if and when a run on the banking houses was precipitated by the breakdown of order which most now foresaw as inevitable.

  Once at sea and caught up in the familiar routine of shipboard life, Kite wondered why he had delayed so long, swiftly forgetting the interminable wait for correspondence referring to all the complexities of Sarah’s affairs. In the manner common to attorneys, Milton proved unused to haste. Nor did Sarah wish to leave until every possible knot had been tied and she could depart free of regrets or obligations. After a week enduring the agonies of sea-sickness, Sarah had found her sea-legs and began to take an interest in her new surroundings. Kite had taken the opportunity of having nothing to do, to school her in the business of the ship, the principles of navigation and of elementary sea-lore.

  Free of the frenetic atmosphere of Boston and her nausea, the Savage’s passage south had proved a congenial hiatus for Sarah. At Antigua, however, further and seemingly interminable enforced idleness combined with anxiety and uncertainty to erode Sarah’s belief in a future and in Kite’s purposeful equanimity. Such had been the pressures of their existence in Boston, that she had assumed that once they reached the Antilles a new existence would unfold. He assumed matters would move ahead swiftly, but he learned to his chagrin that Spitfire had only just departed and would be gone for many weeks. Having learned this he had at first made no further enquiries, reconciling himself to another wait and explaining matters to an increasingly impatient Sarah. Neither of them now enjoyed a rootless existence, and while their sojourn in Boston had been endured as a finite exile spiced with the novelty of their intimacy, they were irked by their life in Antigua as ‘guests’ forced upon the Wentworths’ hospitality.

  To these irritating circumstances came the exacerbation of new uncertainty with the news from Massachusetts concerning the events of 19 April 1774. British troops sent out from Boston to seize illegal arms caches in Concord township had been opposed by militia drawn up on Lexington Green. The redcoats had dispersed the inexperienced ‘Minutemen’ and marched on, but they had found little in the way of arms at their destination and having spoiled quantities of flour and other alleged ‘military stores’ had began to march back to Boston. This proved to be a very different ordeal, and the return march had been harried by highly effective sniper fire from every building on their long route, a profound humiliation for a detachment of British infantry.

  For the Patriot party, the day marked not simply a victory over a British ‘army’, but the long-awaited spark to the assiduously laid powder-train of popular rebellion. For the men who had harried the British soldiers had not all been radical fanatics, but solid Americans for whom the British excursion into the countryside had been an outrage. In the ensuing weeks such men were coming in from far and wide to dig entrenchments cutting off Boston and transforming the town from the hot-bed of rebellion, to the beleaguered centre of Royal Authority in New England. Such news arriving in St John’s only made William Kite grind his teeth in impotent frustration. He resumed his fencing, taking as a partner Nathan Johnstone who had been mysteriously absent on their first arrival.

  Kite had had his first opportunity of speaking confidentially with his former clerk one afternoon as they had rested after a practice bout in a cleared area in the counting-house where once as a young man Kite had once lodged. Prompted, Johnstone revealed his own adventures. ‘I grew tired of Kitty,’ he said, ‘and somewhat ashamed of my conduct with respect of Mr Wentworth, who is a decent enough man when all is said and done.’

  ‘How did you detach yourself from Mistress Wentworth?’ Kite had asked.

  ‘I spoke with her husband and suggested that I shipped with Captain Jones to better learn the ropes and see Havana, Guadeloupe, Basse-terre, Jamaica, St Kitt’s and so forth.’ Johnstone smiled sheepishly at the recollection. ‘He jumped at the notion. I rather think he knew all the time what I was up to – the lady is insatiable, if you’ll pardon me for saying so, but it is so undignified in one of her years – and perhaps he had sharpened his own appetites after a period of fasting…’

  Kite laughed. ‘Yes, I recall she tried to seduce me once.’

  ‘Besides, I had become something of a laughing stock among the garrison,’ Johnstone confessed.

  ‘Ahhh… That I can imagine.’

  ‘Well I removed myself into the schooner for some time, sailed with Jones and visited most of the islands while I have become a tolerable seaman as well. Then I acted Wentworth’s agent in St Maarten until,’ Johnstone shrugged, ‘well I returned here, delighted to find you back and, if
I may say so, sir, so pleasantly circumstanced.’

  ‘I think you will find me a less tolerant husband than Wentworth…’

  ‘Captain Kite,’ Johnstone said hurriedly, ‘please believe I am not that devoid of honour that I would ever, in any circumstances… well… I mean to say, the matter is unthinkable.’

  Kite looked archly at the younger man who had changed since they had last met. ‘Come, Johnstone, let us lay on and see who first scores five.’

  ‘’Twill be you, sir, you have the art to a nicety.’

  They had come en garde again and the scrape and clatter of their buttoned foils had filled the still warm air of the tropical afternoon.

  Such diversions, though pleasant enough, were not satisfactory to the impatient Kite. The mock victories he achieved over Johnstone he wanted translated into real success; the defeats he suffered at Johnstone’s hands became small, prickling reminders of Rathburne’s unopposed run of luck. Kite wanted no proxy wins, he wanted blood and ruin to descend upon Rathburne and his vile gang of murderers and incendiaries and this perverse lust began increasingly to fill his being as the weeks dragged by during the long wait for news of the Spitfire’s return. It was for this reason that when, at long last that hot afternoon Wentworth walked up from the harbour and announced that he had at last received news of the Spitfire, Kite grew so agitated.

  In that impatient moment Kite was far from considering Mrs Wentworth’s suggestion that he beat his old friend as a joke. ‘By God, Madam, that is a capital idea!’ he cried. ‘Come now Wentworth, cease your damned games.’

  Wentworth bent as though cowed, ‘Oh, oh, help, help,’ he pleaded in a squeaky voice, ‘please Captain Kite don’t flog me!’

  ‘Wentworth…’ Kite cautioned, an edge to his voice and his face far from seeing the ridiculous and amusing side of Wentworth’s conduct.

  ‘She’s just come into the harbour,’ Wentworth announced in a sudden rush, recovering his dignity.