Immortal (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Book 2)

by Meredith, Anne

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The Immortal sailed into Norfolk disguised in British colors. She anchored across the harbor from the warship with the cabin window Marley had shot out, and Bronson, Deming, Ashanti, and Marley rowed across in the darkness to see what they could learn.

  The visit was short, the ship empty. Bronson hastily inspected each level of the ship without result, and they rowed back silently.

  They climbed the ladder and retreated to the captain’s cabin, which was lit dimly by a single lamp.

  Marley looked around the room, wondering how much of this was original to the ship and how much had been added to accommodate her husband’s tastes. She knew nothing of her husband’s older brother except what she had learned from Ruth’s journals. Once he had been a slave trader, but in his will had freed everyone on his plantation and supplied them with the means to carry on their lives there as free men. He had built the magnificent mansion at Rosalie, its opulence a tribute to his life’s work—the place that now lay in ruins.

  Most of the ship, she suspected, was original; she matched the look of a ship that had been commissioned thirty-five years ago but that had spent much of that time in dry dock and freshwater.

  “She’s in better shape than the Adventurer,” Bronson said. “And she was but a few years old.”

  As she walked to the windows and glanced up, a smile curved her lips as she recognized an update. A bank of windows had been added at the end of the ceiling, as in the Adventurer. Perhaps Grey Trelawney had been a more practical sort than Bronson, less apt to pass his evenings stargazing and smoking cigars.

  What a detail for Crowell to have recognized as important to Bronson.

  “What is her state with armament?”

  “Sir, we added cannons on the lower decks, but for flexibility we stayed with carronades above—18, 24, and 32 lbs. She’s stocked to protect near or far, but she’s still fast.”

  In other words, while she was no warship, she could hold her own.

  When, Marley wondered, had she become the sort of person who referred to ships with a gender? For good or ill, she had become a sailor.

  “Marley?”

  She turned at the sound of Bronson’s voice. He held a chair for her at the table, and she joined the men. Jem poured freshly brewed coffee into mugs and served them.

  “Without wasting time, let’s make some deductions. Rashall has been taken by a known killer, with assistance from unknown sources. The kidnaper could not have fired the guns that destroyed Adventurer while in that rowboat. At least four men would have been required to do the firing.”

  “Two can operate a carronade,” Deming put in.

  “True. And we believe here that the kidnaper did so out of revenge.”

  “But why after so long?”

  The table went silent. Marley spoke up.

  “Crimes fall into the categories of passion, premeditation, or opportunity. Perhaps here, the three converge.”

  The men glanced at her.

  “Say Manning pondered long on how to get his revenge—years, decades even—until an opportunity presented itself. What if the destruction of the Adventurer was an act of passion, not premeditation, recognized by one of his partners?”

  “And we’ve certainly had no such threats during the time we were away from Norfolk—a place swarming not only with the Navy, but with loyalists.”

  “Sir, who are the two most obviously wanting you dead?” Deming asked.

  “Yes,” Marley said. “Falligan and Snaveling.”

  “I thought you killed Falligan,” Bronson said.

  “I scalded him, then hit him over the head with a teapot. He was screaming as he fell over the gunwale. Can I help it if he can swim?”

  “You just took out half of the British army at Great Bridge, and this cur, you let get away?” he asked with a smirk.

  “With a teapot. Had there been a spot of gunpowder at hand in your cabin, the outcome might have been different.”

  “Indeed. Well, Falligan has fallen in with seedy characters over the past ten years. It’s not inconceivable he and this Manning fellow know each other. The man who had Rashall, however, looked more like a nobleman than an overseer.”

  “He’s had thirty years to earn a fortune by hook or by crook,” Ashanti said. “Nonetheless, I assure you he is without honor. A rapist, a sadist, and a murderer. I pity his sons.”

  “Sons?”

  Ashanti nodded at Bronson. “I remember at least two boys—nearly young men, that is—joining him in the fields at times. Let me think. Their names escape me.”

  “All right. So he may have at least four people working with him. Phil, you and I shall scour the docks with the story that we’re looking for a runaway slave. We meet back here every half hour for a report. Mr. Adams, I hope you understand that the risk is too great for you, and I need you here too much, looking after Marley.”

  “I do understand, although Marley has proven conclusively she can look after herself.” With that, he gave her a nod.

  “Nonetheless. Can I count on you both to look after the ship against our enemies?”

  They agreed, and within minutes the men spread out. No sooner had they departed than they both returned with the location of the ship where escaped slaves were signing up for Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment.

  “Smallpox is aboard the ship, and many of the newly freed are dying,” Deming said. “I’ll go. I had it as a boy.”

  “We’ve all been inoculated, including Rashall,” Ashanti said.

  Marley glanced at Bronson, who said instead, “I’ll go, of course.”

  “Have you been inoculated?”

  “I am going.”

  “I thought you were inoculated when we were?” Ashanti asked.

  “I was in Bermuda then. But I am hale and hearty and we all know that no one shall stop me from going. And you? Have you had the disease?”

  She ducked her head. In point of fact, she had been born nearly twenty years after it had been eradicated in the U.S. In her time, the only concern for smallpox was bioterrorism.

  “I see. Then you’ll stay in this cabin, with the rifle, until Rashall is aboard and quarantined.”

  With that, the men were gone.

  She looked around the great cabin, curious about what she found. The captain’s quarters felt exactly as she would have imagined. No amount of refurbishing or priest’s blessings could have scrubbed away the troubled soul of the man who had once carried hundreds of human beings into bondage—the man her sister had fallen in love with.

  Carrying the lamp with her, she opened the closet, startled to find clothing there. The style of the middle century men’s clothing being similar to that later in the century, it was dated only by the length of coats and waistcoats and the detail of the trim. Fashioned from rich silks and velvets and intricately embroidered, they reflected a wealthy man of taste.

  Tellingly, someone had kept these garments free of cobwebs and dust. Occasional evidence of a moth was the only proof that the items weren’t new clothing.

  She grew curious about Grey Trelawney: who he was, where he had attended school, why he had chosen such an abhorrent livelihood. One thing she knew from the most casual examination of these clothes and this ship: He had been loved and respected.

  She inspected the cabin, as best she could without lighting another candle or lamp. At last, she came to the table and sat at the captain’s chair behind it. Turning, she saw the ships of the harbor behind the Immortal, and she imagined the brother of Bronson Trelawney sitting there, gazing out as the South Atlantic—and the port villages of Africa—receded behind him.

  Shifting in the chair, she felt her thigh connect with a drawer, and she opened it. Several ship’s logs lay there with a quill, a tiny dish, and a small box of powdered ink. She brightened the lamp, then withdrew the log on the top and opened it.

  The notations on the left took the same format as they had in Bronson’s log, but contained nothing particularly interesting
. The series of columns, left to right, indicated hour, speed in knots, water depth in fathoms, the course in which the ship was steering, the wind direction, and remarks.

  She read the remarks simply for something to do, beginning with the most recent entry.

  Remarks for Tuesday September 19, 1775

  This day begins with mild and pleasant weather. 12:30 left Rosalie.

  NNW breeze, making our work light. 4:45 arrive Stonefield. Mr. H and Miss J debark to remain behind as we prepare to return to R. Weather continues mild.

  The trees grow colorful. Lovely day to be alive and on the James.

  Was the canny old Crowell such a philosopher?

  She scanned through, detecting a pattern. Every month or so, Crowell and a small crew took the ship out for a pleasure cruise, generally to Richmond, sometimes—though not recently, and not as often—to Norfolk. To preserve her hull, she presumed, they kept to the freshwater.

  She turned a page, noticing a different handwriting.

  Remarks for Saturday February 18, 1774

  The day is cold but pleasant. Mr. Crowell abed with a fever. 12:15 left Rosalie.

  Winds right blustery NNE. 5:00 arrive Stonefield. Left Mr. Hastings here for a visit with Miss Julie Anna. The old couple who took her in all them years back were in right good spirits. That old man doesn’t seem to get any older. He’s looked the same for ten years.

  2:30 left Stonefield, 6:30 arrive Rosalie.

  Marley gaped. Julie Anna? Could it be the person after whom her own sister, Juliana, had been named—perhaps even an ancestor, since Hastings himself was?

  She continued to scan the ship’s log, but Crowell’s notes resumed. They referred frequently to H and J, but gave no more personal details, simply the presence of the two. Because the ship sailed rarely and only for short trips—most with few remarks—each spread easily contained a year’s worth of entries.

  And then several blank pages appeared before another entry, also by Crowell. But his handwriting was much faded by time. Indeed, a few years had passed between his last, later entry, and the earlier years when the ship had sailed.

  Of course. He thought his captain had died in the fire at Rosalie. The ship had been entirely in dry dock, then.

  Crowell remarked on only two more voyages.

  Remarks for Tuesday, July 6, 1746

  Red sky this morning. 6:30 we left Rosalie and a storm behind us but we are still on guard.

  An unusual voyage and short, to Boston. We are today a ship without our captain. He trained and taught us well and any one of us could lead the ship and mark the log—but my heart is heavy with a sense of foreboding, I know not why. We have aboard as an honored guest the lady who saved our captain’s life in court this week, and her husband, Boston bound.

  Remarks for Tuesday, July 13, 1746

  12:00 Depart Massachusetts Bay. As foul a storm I haven’t seen in ages, as we return to Rosalie.

  Captain Grey alerted us all before we left for Boston that he has given up the triangle trade. We are free to find other ships or remain behind at Rosalie, but most of the men are sailors brokenhearted at the idea of dry land.

  I am loyal to my captain and will seek a post with Mr. H. I know that blaggard lying Manning left a welcome hole, so perhaps I can serve as his overseer. His boys Sheppard and Jack did most of his work, anyway. He was a sorry lot, but his boys was good. That Sheppard, he doesn’t look nothing like him—Manning burly and black-haired, Shep pale with those cold blue eyes, like an iceberg. Still waters, my mum would say.

  Sheppard. Finally the name Camisha had mentioned rang with familiarity in Marley’s memory—so long ago, back at the hotel registration desk as they prepared to leave Williamsburg. The tall, icy man of whom Nan had been so terrified.

  But it made no sense—after all, Sheppard was a common name, wasn’t it? Surely it was a coincidence.

  She returned to the ship’s log, turning the page. There followed an entirely different, faded handwriting, and a new author. This man had made full use of the remarks column, expanding about the concerns of his life.

  Remarks for Friday April 21, N.S. 1746

  This day begins as have the past seven, in clouds and foul weather. 12:30 arrive at Rosalie after but four hours in the Chesapeake Bay.

  God save us all, 45 have died of the original 184. Two others gravely ill. A fever afflicted the ship, its first victim the winsome wee one from the S.L. village. Her sunny smile haunts my nightmares.

  Mr. Gideon Miller leaves my employ this day after being with me since this ship’s start. He reminds me a slave ship is no home for a family, no place for small children to grow, as I know too well. Hastings has promised him employment and protection working for his son Wm. and wife at Stonefield. Gideon is not fond of that area for that curse business involving his family, but his circumstances are precarious.

  I truly fear for him; for his son, Robt.; and other children they may have. His wife Sarita is striking and beautiful; with riotous black curls that take on red fire at night, and skin like burnished gold. She does not look like a woman from her region but she is indeed a Negro. A free woman, also, her freedom paid dearly by Mr. Miller across the years. They are welcome to abide at Rosalie—but I know not how safe they would be there, either. The other bondsmen would fear him and resent her.

  Apart from all this, I am plagued by anger, by discontent. Their source, I cannot tell. Their target, I do not know. I know but that the memory of the little girl—my own Emily’s age—brings me to tears in my bed. Now, when I would already be itching to leave the shore—dear God in Heaven, help me. I dare not contemplate another voyage like this one.

  As she read the confession of the slaver, pieces of the confusion that had plagued Marley for all of her life began to work toward each other, pushed so by this lost absolution. Her father, the son of a sailor; her father’s mother, according to Nan, a beauty from a faraway land … in your lovely dark eyes are her laughter and her tears.

  Nan had been born in this time. Was it so far-fetched that Marley’s own father—and perhaps her mother—had as well? Her own birth certificate placed her birth in a hospital in Richmond, Virginia, in 1991, but she had never come across a similar document for either of her parents.

  She continued paging back through the ship’s log, and then into those below it, aware that she was reading the innermost thoughts of Grey Trelawney, the brother of Bronson who was presumed to have died at Rosalie in 1746, not long after Bronson had been born. And that if she understood correctly, she and her sisters had ties to the Trelawneys that went back nearly three centuries.

  Chapter Forty

  Deep in the dead of night, Norfolk harbor lay cold and silent except for the creak of wood, the occasional lap of water against the quay, and the stroll of a watchman along the waterfront. In the distance, faint laughter and conversation echoed from behind closed doors, where sailors made merry between voyages.

  A small boat drew alongside the ship where the Royal Navy housed the most recent recruits of the Ethiopian Regiment. Six men waited in the boat. Five would go aboard and seek Rashall; the sixth would remain with a rifle for unforeseen complications.

  Bronson’s gaze moved over the harbor, crowded with Royal Navy ships, looking for any previously unrecognized threat. He found none.

  God had favored them this night with an overcast sky, darkening the harbor and their likelihood of discovery. The Royal Navy had favored them by anchoring apart from the other ships.

  Deming, the man among them most adept in hand-to-hand combat, led them up the rope ladder left there to welcome any escaped slave. He was a tough, scrappy little man they’d stumbled across in a bar in Shanghai, astounded to discover he’d been born in Surry. He’d joined on that moment. He was a lieutenant without parallel; intelligent, loyal, trustworthy, and hard-working. His unquestioning courage outmatched that of the fiercest hunting dog. Above that, he had a gift for strategy beyond that of any ordinary sailor, and he could have easily captained
his own ship. Bronson was glad he had no desire to.

  He hesitated, his head level with the gunwale of the Royal Navy ship, as he sized up the threat on deck. He waited, one hand held out flat to the men below, for perhaps a minute. Then he leapt silently over the gunwale, and even as Bronson hurried into his slot, he overtook the sailor on watch, silently choking him into submission.

  As he passed out, the men hastened over with athletic grace and spread out across the deck as they’d planned. They had little time before he’d come around. Bronson headed straight for the captain’s cabin, his knife drawn, Deming perhaps ten feet behind—far enough to provide a second volley, if need be.

  He opened the door silently.

  “Drop it, Hawk.”

  Across from them, sitting behind an elaborate table, was Stephen Falligan, a pistol trained directly on the door.

  “I’d listen to him, if I were you.”

  This from none other than Percy Snaveling, perhaps 15 feet across, sitting leisurely in a chair, with another pistol. This weapon was focused on Rashall, who lay tied up on the deck.

  “Ah,” Bronson said, as if caught off-guard.

  The angle wasn’t ideal. He hesitated, even as he casually brought his free hand behind him, signaling to Deming with four fingers.

  Then three. Two.

  When his index finger closed, he hurled his knife at Snaveling’s chest and dove toward Rashall. The knife flashed with the gold of the lamplight in a half spin and hit its target true.

  Before Falligan could so much as cock his pistol, Deming’s knife sank into his heart.

  Neither man made a sound as they went down.

  Bronson pulled the pistol away from Snaveling as he withdrew his throwing knife, wiped it, and replaced it in its scabbard. He placed his fingers firm against Snaveling’s fleshy throat, feeling for a pulse. Then he turned to Deming, who was already at the table, retrieving his blade and Falligan’s pistol.