Yankee Privateer

by Andre Norton

  Farstarr was trying to tire him, tire him until his defense would falter. And then he would be cut to pieces at his cousin's leisure. Such a dirty game would appeal to the man whose reputation he had heard. There remained a single chance . . .

  Fitz gave ground again deliberately. He allowed his point to fall only a fraction of an inch, and paid for it with a prick which drew blood to mark his shoulder. But that served. He thrust up—and the French trick went through to its real conclusion—not to disarm, but to wound. Farstarr's blade went wide.

  It was a queer sensation, feeling his steel go into flesh. Fitz found himself looking down at a man who coughed up gouts of blood until he slipped forward onto his face and lay still.

  "Murderer! Bloody murderer!"

  Half by instinct, Fitz dodged the blow and jumped away before the candlestick could fall again. Farstarr's three companions were edging toward him, two with drawn swords, the other with the heavy candlestick.

  Fitz moved for the only safety he knew. He leaped back through the open door of the breakfast room and wrenched at the window fastening. Someone tore at him even as he dropped over the sill. He sped down the terrace stairs into the garden. There were plenty of hiding places to choose from—but he knew none of them well enough to dare take cover. He could be smoked out if they took to beating the brush. This was the time to test his half plan of the afternoon. Without hesitation he ran toward the cottage of the Hawtreys.

  16

  “Ware, Press!”

  Ye Parliament of England,

  You lords and commons, too,

  Consider well what you're about,

  And what you're going to do;

  You're now to fight with Yankees,

  I'm sure you'll rue the day,

  You roused the sons of liberty,

  In North America.

  —YE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND

  Racing down the gravel path, Fitz strained his ears to hear shouting from the house he had left. But still unpursued, he doubled around the end of the stableyard and pounded up—almost winded—into the tiny dooryard of the Hawtrey cottage. Before his fist could fall on the door panels, it was opened and he stumbled into the fire-lighted room.

  George Hawtrey shot the bar across the door as Fitz clutched at the high back of the settle. Granny Hawtrey and the man who shared her possession of the hearthstone looked up with no vestige of alarm or surprise.

  "Blood "

  Fitz involuntarily looked at his two hands, but no stain showed on his fingers.

  "Did ye kill him?" the man by the fire asked in a calm, conversational tone as he knocked out his pipe against one of the bricks.

  Fitz swallowed twice before he shaped his answer with dry lips. “I don't know "

  "Well iffen ye did, Jack Ketch will be a-sniffin at yer heels fer sure. Iffen ye didn't, ye'll have m'lord a-doin' o' th' same thing. O' th' two o' 'em, I'd choose me Ketch. He'll be a sight more merciful."

  "How did you " began Fitz. The man indicated his hostess.

  "Ask her. She said as how ye'd be a-comin' in, jus' loike ye wi' all th' hounds a-baying behind ye. Well, Granny, an' wot do we now?"

  "Get him away." She nodded toward Fitz. "George, bring the clothes. And you, Jem Lovel, you'll see him a piece on the road—the road the 'gentlemen' use."

  The man's bushy eyebrows wriggled. "Will I now, Granny? An' who will be a-sayin' he'll keep his tongue tight 'twixt his jaws after? Th' 'gentlemen' be choosy— that they be!"

  Granny Hawtrey laughed. "Jem Lovel, you and I know the 'gentlemen' and their little ways. 'Twon't be the first time one of this young gentleman's service was helped overseas by those we can lay name to. Put him on the gentlemen's road—and don't come back with ill tidings after. Ah, George, you took long enough. Here, kinsman." She pushed across to Fitz the bundle her grandson had brought her. "Back into the corner with you and on with these. They'll give the fox a different coat and maybe throw the hounds off scent."

  With some fumbling aid from George, Fitz drew on rough clothing which smelled of the stable. It was a tolerable fit and must have been the working suit of one of the Court's grooms. Only the square-toed boots were a little loose. Fitz hoped that he would not have to run in them.

  His wig was gone and his unruly thatch of short hair stood up on his skull like wheat stubble. Granny frowned at that and sent George to fetch a kerchief which she twisted about the Marylander's head like a gypsy scarf. Jem watched, teetering from heel to toe, his hands clasped behind him.

  "Dirty him up a mite," he ordered. "He's too clean, he is. That's right, boy."

  George drew a finger across the sooty brick and dabbed at Fitz's face.

  "After he runs about a bit—that'll be as good as a mask, it will. Well, Granny, time we shoves off. Got good wishes for us an' this night's work?"

  She made a swift gesture in the air, sketching some sign between them, to which he replied with a bowed head. But she caught Fitz's hand and peered into it intently before she would let him go.

  "You'll not be back," she told him.

  "I have no wish to be—save to see you again," he returned.

  "That is not to be," she shook her head. "My bed's ready and airing for me in the churchyard. And I make plans for George. It is time that the Lyons are gone from Starr—we have been here too long. The strain has run out, the soil is sour. Go from Starr, Lyon, but do not take Starr with you!"

  "That, also, I have no wish to do."

  She dropped his hand. "Good hearing. Naught of you is truly Starr—though Lyon you may be. George!" The boy came out of the shadows.

  "He's Lyon, too." She pointed with her chin to her grandson. "Should he come to you someday remember that, kinsman!"

  Fitz put out his hand and grasped the one George hesitatingly extended.

  "Come to Maryland and I'll prove how green my memory can be. We can use your breed overseas!"

  Granny sighed and half closed her eyes. "Done and well done," she said, half to herself. "Now—out with you before Jem grows pricky with waiting."

  Fitz stooped and kissed her smooth cheek. There was a faint spicy scent about her. She smiled and her lids drooped shut. He went out the door to join the impatient Lovel.

  Jem must have known the reaches of Starr Court grounds as well as he knew the lines on his own hard-palmed hand. He slipped through trees on a path which Fitz painstakingly followed. Once, both crouched by a carriage drive and watched two riders thunder by in the half-dark. Jem chuckled.

  "Beatin' th' bounds, be they? Lawks—mighty clumsy they be about it, too. But when they do have th' keepers out—then we'd best be out o' reach, cully."

  He hurried their pace and took more devious ways than ever, until at last they came out on the banks of a stream where Jem crouched down and ran his hands through the water, feeling for something lying under its surface. At length he gave a grunt of satisfaction and fetched up a length of dripping rope which he pulled toward him. Out of the dim shadows of the small river came a boat. Jem climbed in and Fitz tumbled after him. Lovel shoved off with the oars almost without sound and began to row with the current.

  Fitz had no way of measuring time. It might have been hours or only long minutes before they sighted the pale arch of a bridge spanning the water. Jem grunted again and swung in toward shore, allowing their craft to drift, and pulling on the overhanging willows to guide them along the bank. They slipped under the dark roof of the bridge, and Jem, with a thrust of his arm against the water-worn stone of a pier, sent them straight ashore. Muttering an order to Fitz to hold on to a small wharf, he got on land, tied the boat, and beckoned Fitz to come. Two steps up the wharf led them to a door set flush with a wall. Jem pounded twice on this, waited a moment, and then thumped a third and a fourth time. Without a single protesting squeak or creak it opened, and Fitz, Lovel's hand on his elbow, stepped into velvet blackness.

  There was the snap of a tinderbox, and a pale flame suddenly glowed, was put to the stub of a candle and held aloft.

&
nbsp; "Ye're late!" The owner of the candle was only half a face in its short light, and that half was none too welcoming.

  Fitz felt Jem's shrug. "I was kept. Strawn gone?"

  "Strawn gone?" mimicked the candle holder. " 'E's bin gone this 'alf 'our, m'lad. We ain't playin' games 'ereabout—as well ye know, Jem. An' wot 'ave we 'ere now?" The candle swung at Fitz.

  "Some one as has t' take th' right road—quick, too."

  "Oh, 'e does, does 'e? An' who is a-goin' t' show it t' 'im? Strawn ain't a-goin' t' be back this fortnight. Th' Runner 'as bin a-peerin' about a little too free loike. No, Strawn, 'e's a-layin' low fer a spell."

  Jem bit his thumb. For the first time he seemed a little disconcerted.

  "This be a pickle," he confided to the world.

  "Ain't it?" agreed his host heartily. "But it ain't one o' my spicin', Jem. An' I'll thank ye t' git out o' my sight."

  "There's Hennery "

  " 'E's gone, too, slipped out las' night. 'E didn't loike th' law smell as 'as bin a-blowin' 'ereabout this week past. Take th' sprout down t' Evans an' let 'im pass 'im along th' other route. 'Tis all ye can do."

  "All right, all right." Jem flapped his hands. "Come on, lad," he flung over his shoulder at Fitz.

  They went back to their boat, but Lovel didn't push off at once. Instead he played a bit with the oars as if uncertain.

  "I don't like it," he confessed at last. "Law sniffin' 'round an' all. We goes downstream an' maybe we runs into a net. Someone must 'ave bin talkin' improper. No, we don't go downstream—we goes up again!"

  Having made this decision they started rowing against the current, back the way they had come. But Jem had no intention of retracing their full journey of that night, for, before Fitz's shoulders began to ache too much, he pointed the skiff shoreward and splashed through the shallows to bring them to land again.

  On the other side of a screen of willows there was the thread of a path, clear enough to follow in the moonlight, and Lovel turned into it at a pace which made Fitz scurry. The path brought them out on a woodland trace in which cart tracks were deeply cut. Jem glanced at the moon, drew a deep lungful of the rising wind, and plunged along the uneven footing between the tracks.

  "Happens we be lucky," he said, "we'll come up t' th' Pig and Angel an' find Walt Torby there. 'E takes th' Friday cart int' Portsmouth "

  Fitz stopped short. "Portsmouth!" Jem laughed at the consternation in his voice.

  "Nay, we won't go a-paradin' in, lad. I don't fancy th' press gang any more 'n ye do. But we'll spare our feet a mite an' be some miles on t' a snug place as I 'ave knowledge oWith th' gentlemen takin' t' cover, we 'ave got t' use our wits." He trudged on at a swinging, steady trot which Fitz found difficult to hold. A horseman dismounted or a sailor ashore does not take kindly to the art of the pedestrian at any time. And his misgivings about those miserable boots were proven true. If he could judge from past experience, there would be sizable blisters on both heels by morning.

  After a long space of misery, Jem took pity on his silent traveling companion and signaled a halt. Fitz dropped puffing on a hedge bank, while Jem, whistling a dragging little tune hardly above his breath, looked about him for a familiar landmark.

  " 'Bout a quarter-mile more," he encouraged, "we'll 'ave t' leave th' track an' come down along th' hill— t' show as how we are rightuns."

  Leaving the track meant a struggle with briars in which Fitz decidedly came off second best. He limped on, trying not to lag too far behind Lovel as they circled a clump of trees, distorted by shadows and the moon into a very ugly and menacing shape, and angled down a slope to a low-lying building where a single pale light outlined an upper window.

  Jem's whistle shrilled up into a flutelike call. And then the little man puckered his lips to give the perfect cry of a hunting owl, three times uttered. The light in the window brightened and faded three times. Jem's breath went out in a sigh of relief, which told Fitz that he had not been quite so confident of their welcome as he had allowed the American to believe.

  "Come on!"

  Jem was already scuttling up to a doorway.

  "Jem—Jem, dearie!" A white arm came out of the dark and pulled Lovel through. A moment later Fitz heard the sound of a hearty kiss delivered with fervor, and the voice arose in affectionate scolding. "Dearie, dearie, ye 'ave bin such a time away, Jem."

  "Stow th' gab, lass!" But Jem's rebuke was softly given. "Have a friend wi' me. Come, cully "

  They were in a kind of outhouse where covered pans and crocks were set out in neat rows along open shelves. A candle had been put down on the edge of the nearest shelf, and in its light, a stoutly built but not uncomely girl stood with her thick hands still on Jem's shoulders, but her eyes now for Fitz.

  "Walt here?" demanded Jem.

  "Aye," the girl responded reluctantly. "Wot be ye a-wantin' wi' Walt? Ye'll bide awhile, Jem?"

  "No. We're on wi' Walt. Th' Ridin Officers be out, lass. Here give we a bite an' sup an' then go rouse out Walt."

  She sniffed a little and flapped at her eyes with the edge of her none-too-clean apron, favoring Fitz meanwhile with a stare which held little good will. Apparently she blamed him for Jem's desire to move on as speedily as possible. Slamming the wooden trenchers down on a ledge, she set out a loaf, some crumbling cheese, and a cold ham which already had been hacked at. Two tankards of rather muddy-looking ale completed the feast she spread before stumping off.

  Fitz fell to, his hunger turning the scraps before him into the equal of a lord mayor's banquet. And Jem's rhythmical munching was not more than a chew or two behind.

  "Luck's turned," Jem said through a mouthful. "Walt's here an' he's a-knowin' cull, Walt is. He'll see us safe along—in comfort too, no more foot-sloggin'."

  "Now that I wouldn't say, Jem Lovel!" A red-haired giant stood in the doorway, the girl bobbing up and down behind trying to see over his shoulder.

  Jem took a long pull of the bitter ale and then pounded his can down on the ledge. "An' why not, Walt?" he demanded with some heat.

  "I heard as 'ow they 'ave patrols out, Jem boy. An' th' Press Gang is a-workin' inland. I ain't runnin' me neck int' that fer anyone!"

  Jem wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "No one askin' ye t'—not that I hear tell o'. We want a lift for a mite when ye push off. No questions asked "

  Walt yawned widely enough to dislocate his jaws. "Climb in th' back o' th' cart, culls. What I ain't seed,

  I don't know " He pushed through the door and was gone. But the girl lingered.

  "Jem," she whispered. "Jem, ye can lie up 'ere— safe an' snug—none a-knowin' o' it! An' no Ridin' Officer is a-goin' t' arsk 'is questions 'ere—it ain't 'ealthy—as well they all know! Couple o' days, dearie," she stroked his arm with her red, work-scarred hand.

  Jem shook his head. "Word's gone out. It ain't safe, Matty. I'll be back, lass—ain't I always bin?"

  "When?" she persisted.

  Jem shrugged. "Now how would I be a-knowin' that? When I kin come I will. Finished, lad?"

  Fitz swallowed and nodded.

  "Then we'll find Walt's cart an' git us a mite o' shut-eye. Walt by th' stable as always, lass?"

  She was sullenly gathering the remnants of the meal and refused to answer. Jem paid no more attention to her, going out the door and sidling along the wall of an outhouse until they reached some covered carts. Jem counted these and went over to the third, and hoisted himself over the tail. With the ease of an old campaigner he found them a niche among the boxes and bales inside. Pulling a blanket off the driver's seat over them, he and Fitz huddled down together.

  A steady creak-creak rang in Fitz's wakeful ears. For a moment or two he looked straight up, expecting to see the lines of a ship's timbers over his head. But a stretch of dingy white stuff roofed him in. Then he remembered the fantastic journey of the night before. Fitz sat up with the unpleasant feeling of one who has slept in his clothes and has no means of remedying the situation.

  Over the
tail of the cart he could see a set of deep-cut tracks winding away at a pace so deliberate that a walking man might well overtake them without unduly exerting himself. He turned his head and was faced by the broad backs of Walt and Jem seated together on the driver's perch making the air rank with the smell of strong tobacco, which was as much a part of Jem as the moleskin waistcoat fastened with pewter buttons over his chest.

  "Awake, lad?" Jem peered back at him. "Good. Well have t' be a-takin' t' our feet again soon. What d'ye think, Walt—downstream?"

  The wide shoulders moved in a hunching shrug. ' 'Bout as good a way as any, Jem. They do say as 'ow th' Press is a-workin' inland. Take t' yer 'eels, cully, if fen that be true!"

  Jem spat over the wheel. "I ain't minded t' take 't sea, Walt, have no fear o' that. An' pass th' word t' th' boys."

  "That I will—right an' 'earty!"

  The heavy-footed cart team plodded on their way, and Fitz was half-lulled back into slumber again since Jem made no move to quit their present form of transportation. All that had happened at Starr Court now seemed part of a wild dream and grew more unreal with every passing minute. Had he really fought that duel in the hall and seen the Viscount go down? Here he could doubt that he had. . . .

  Somewhere a bird sang a clear, true scale of notes which mounted up and up and up. Fitz's eyelids drooped shut as he half-lay, half-sat, propped up by the goods that Walt was transporting. It was very peaceful and very soothing.

  A sudden startled exclamation from Walt put an end to that. The big man was sawing back on the reins, pulling up the ponderous horses. In the dust of the track, almost under their noses, a man was scrambling to his feet. Fitz, jolted forward, gripped the driver's seat and tried to learn what had happened.

  " 'Ware Press!" The fellow in the road choked out his warning and beat away—up the embankment, thrusting through the hedge at the top almost before those in the cart could understand him.

  Walt spit out a black oath. But Jem had already flung himself off the seat.

  "Take t' th' woods!" he shouted. "Take t' th' woods!"