by Smith, Skye
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On Wednesdays when the agents were finished at the port, James would ask Jon to lock the door and hang the "private function" sign in the window. James would then become his own customer and sit with the regulars. Britta soon learned that the private function was actually the meeting of a political party, a party that was almost, but not quite secret. She had heard it called the Caucus Club.
When she asked James about it, he at first did not want to answer. It was frustrating. Her life was confined to the walls of the tavern, except for when she went to spend time with James's wife. Though she did not mind living within these confines, not knowing what was going on was maddening.
Though the wife served meals upstairs, the only food that the tavern sold were snacks that the local bakery supplied, such as small loaves of bread, or eel pies. The next morning, while Jon was collecting the snacks from the bakery, and she was busy washing herself and dressing for the work day ahead, James came behind her curtain again. After a week of working for him, she knew what his weakness was. Though he swore often that he would never touch her, he could not keep his eyes off her.
They looked at each other across the bed. She was already mostly dressed for the day. She sighed and got undressed again so that he could watch her dress. As she dressed she turned slowly so that he could see all of her. He moaned. Didn't he realize that she would rather he complement her with his words, than make bestial noises. "I still don't have a mirror, so you will have to be my mirror. Do I look good?" she asked. He moaned again.
"May I finish dressing now?" she asked. He hid the bulge in his britches and nodded yes. "Now will you tell me about the Caucus Club. Since my future husband, whoever he may be, probably belongs to it, then shouldn't I know more about it."
"When you were but a child," he began, "there was a horrible and costly war here called the French and Indian War."
"Yes," she said, "but not just here. I know it as the Seven Years War. It was a world war, everywhere at once. Both my fathers were killed fighting in it."
James was amazed. Women just didn't know such things, or at least never admitted to knowing them. "Yes, yes, it was a world war. I agree that our war here was just a small part of it. We won our part of it, but when it was over and the peace treaties were signed, we gained nothing. In fact, it was as if we were being punished for winning." He had to stop talking because she was putting up her hair and her grace of movement took his breath away.
Once her hair was up, he tried to focus his thoughts again. "How do I explain it. Hmm. Before the war, the borders of these provinces were being pushed ever westward. The land on the other side of the mountains supposedly belonged to France or to Spain, or to the Red Indians, but since they were all fighting the English we kept moving in and clearing land, and planting farms and claiming the land as our own.
After the peace treaties of '63 ended the war, we were told that we could no longer expand by moving to the west. We were not allowed to claim land that was already claimed as part of the now English province of Quebec, or as part of the French province of Louisiana. We could not even claim Red Indian land and push them off it. Under the peace treaties all people who were already living on land, were acknowledged as having the rights to that land, including the Indians.
It was ridiculous. What do savages know of the value of land. They are in our way. They have always been in our way. The difference is that under the treaties, they suddenly had the right to be in our way and we suddenly had no right to take their land."
Britta snickered, "I have heard the Caucus arguing in the tavern. The word I hear the most is 'freedom'. I am a bond slave. The poor that come to New England all start as bond slaves. I have even seen Darkie slaves, chattel slaves, working on the docks. I see the Red Indian women working chained together so they won't run home to their villages It seems to me that your Caucus men folk talk a lot about their own freedom but they don't seem to talk about freedom for anyone else. It's as if they want freedom from English oppression so that they can be the new oppressors. Am I right?"
"Britta, you are so naive. This is not about poor people like us. This is about who is going to be the rich and powerful elite of the future. The rich and powerful here in New England no longer want to bow to the rich and powerful of England. The local businesses and banks no longer want to be just the local middlemen of the businesses and banks of England. We want local control."
She was finished preparing herself for work. She reached back and felt her braided hair. It felt straight though a mirror would make it all so much easier. "But in the meeting they were talking about having a leader called a president."
He sighed, "A president is just a king who must be elected every few years, you know, chosen by a vote of the richest men. His main job will be to make sure that we are all protected and defended."
She looked him in the eyes. "I may be naive, but I am not stupid. The president will always side with the rich men who put him in power. He will ignore the needs of the rest of us."
He watched her stand and move towards him. She was so graceful. He breathed again. "Well, in any case, now you know. I would not call the Caucus a secret club, but it is very private. It would be best not to speak of it."
* * * * *
Next Wednesday evening Britta paid more attention to what was being said around her as she poured ale and parried unwanted touches. Unfortunately this was not a regular Caucus meeting. This was not the normal bitch fest about taxes and parliament, but about an immediate problem that the ship owners, that is, the smugglers, were having with one of the customs patrol ships.
The tall man from her first day at the tavern seemed to be the main speaker. His name was Captain Benjamin Lindsay and his sloop the Hannah ran a packet and passenger service between Providence, Newport, and New York.
The captain spoke very clearly, "Our packet routes do not pay for themselves unless we carry some cargoes of great value. Unfortunately the most valuable cargos are the very cargos that the customs counthouse in Boston are the most interested in taxing. This is not new. This has been so since the end of the war. What is new is the customs schooner Gaspee and her captain, Dudingston.
The man refuses to abide by the same agreement that we have with all the other customs captains. They are all well paid to ignore out ships when they are flying a green pennant. They can play customs man to their hearts content with any of our ships that aren't flying that flag. This has worked well both for us and for them for five years now."
"That is exactly why the Company asked for the Gaspee to be sent here from Pennsylvania," said a very large man, as tall as Captain Lindsay but with much more heft to him. He had been introduced to her as Captain John Brown. He was the richest man in Providence, and paid for many men to drink in this tavern. She always served him first and poured his rum from a special reserved bottle.
"I'll lay you odds that the Company pays him better not to take our bribes," said Captain Brown. "The bastards. It's just not right to bribe someone to do their job. Anyway, it is Dudingston who is the problem, not the Gaspee. He has already seized Greene's sloop the Fortune and now she sits idle in Boston harbor. We all know that the Company paid the Boston customs men well for keeping her idle. They are not stupid, and they have their local spies. Look at that Daggett fellow who pilots the Gaspee."
"Daggett is no longer on the Gaspee," said someone from down the table. "He has argued with Dudingston one to many times and has been left ashore. The Gaspee no longer has a local pilot."
It took Britta a span of three jugs of ale before she learned that the Company was the British East India Company, that the Gaspee was a customs schooner, a very fast ship, and Dudingston was her Scottish captain. She also found out that the Fortune was a packet sloop that was owned by the Greene family from Newport, but all of this new knowledge did not explain why everyone was so angry tonight.
There were a lot of men taking turns speaking. Most of the speakers were from either the Brown famil
y or the Greene family. The Greenes were the angriest of all the men. They had lost much when the sloop the Fortune had been seized and they wanted to teach Dudingston a lesson. The Browns just wished that he would take bribes like all the other customs captains did.
They kept coming back to the statement that the problem with the Company was that they could not hurt the head, only the fingers. She later figured out that the head was the central counthouse of the Company in London, and the fingers were the local offices and agents. Without anyone of importance within local reach, there was no one to threaten.
As the men drank they became louder and were not staying seated. She was spending half her time slapping wandering hands away from her, to the point where she was no longer even attempting to deliver jugs to the middle tables. There was no way of getting there without turning her back to either one set of men or another.
Brown's rumbling voice bellowed out for quiet, and everyone looked at him, including Britta. "Girl, come here, I need more ale." He watched her dance and dodge and twirl to evade the hands that reached for her. After she finally reached him and set a jug down, he asked her to pour one for him. While she was leaning over she felt his hand on her bum. The men around started to make rude remarks. "Shut it," he said. "She's too good for any of you."
He gave her bum a last soft pat and took his hand away. "The ale is slow in coming 'cause she is spending more time fighting off your hands than she is pouring. Well from now on, any man that touches this fine little bum must buy a round." He looked at the men with the stern look of a captain giving orders, and all were quiet. Then a big smile came to his face, and he grabbed her bum in his big hand and squeezed it, and she struggled to jump away and slap it. "The next round is on me," he yelled and the tavern erupted in cheers and laughter.
As angry as Britta was with Captain Brown, she was able to walk between the tables unmolested. Some of them would move their hands as if they were going to grab her, but they always pulled it back with a laugh, and she was never actually touched. Such was the power that John Brown had over these men.
With the fresh jugs delivered, the meeting became so rowdy that Britta again became afraid for her own safety so she stopped serving ale and switched jobs with Jon. She went to work filling jugs from the ale barrels, while he went out with the next ale jugs. Meanwhile, James and Captain Lindsay were leaning against the barrel she was filling from, trying to discuss something important over all the noise.
"Brown has them stirred up beyond reason, despite him competing against the Greenes, and that it helps his business that the Fortune is idle. He must have a very valuable cargo on the way," said the captain. "This is insane. We have a chance to stop Dudingston through legal trickery, and yet all the young lawyers in that room want to talk about is violent revenge. I am out of here James. I will act alone. I want nothing more to do with these hotheads."
"You have a plan, then?" asked James. When the captain nodded he said "Then tell it to us all."
"Too that mob. And how do I know there are no spies amongst them. Not on your life."
"Then tell me," said James. "I will make sure that only the right people hear of it, one at a time."
The captain sighed, moved to one side so that Britta had room to kneel at the ale barrel, and said "There is an outstanding Rhode Island warrant for Dudingston to answer charges rising from the seizure of The Fortune. He has refused to acknowledge it. If his feet touch down on Rhode Island soil then any of us can hold him pending his delivery to a local judge. My plan is simple. Trick him into disembarking in Rhode Island."
"And how do you plan on doing that, Benjamin? The man is not stupid. He knows of the warrant and the risk of it to his person. He stays on his ship. He always stays on his ship."
"What these hotheads refuse to admit is that the man is just doing his job. They are only angry because he is very good at his job. He is a young navy man with his first command. He does everything by the book. He is therefore predictable, and that is his weakness."
"I agree with you Benjamin, but that just means he is a prick to deal with. Ask any that have had dealings with him. It is no wonder they hate him. What is the world coming to when an officer threatens to arrest you for offering a bribe. If everyone did that, business would come to a complete stop. The man is a menace not just to us, but to his brother officers."
"I have dealings with him regularly and I do not hate him. How can I take issue with a man's honesty. He does his job and he does it by the book. He hauls me over every time the Hannah makes for Providence and asks to see my manifest. His orders are to check the papers of incoming ships over a certain tonnage and that is what he does, even though he knows I just run a packet service from New York."
"So what of it." said James. He did not need to speak so loudly now. The tavern was calming. "It is inconvenient for you and slows the trip for your passengers."
"On my next journey back from New York, I will unload at Newport as usual before I make for Providence, but this time when the Gaspee hails me I am not going to stop. I am going to cram on all sails and run for it."
"But he will give chase and use his cannon to fire warnings. You will endanger the lives of your passengers."
The captain smiled. "I will give the passengers the option of disembarking at Newport. There I will take on the extra crew needed for fast sailing, and some of them will dress as passengers. He will fire warning shots, yes, but he knows we are a passenger packet so he will never aim at us. He will go by the book and follow the navy's rules of engagement to the letter. If I do not heel over to his warning, then he will follow me until I stop and then he will board me.
All I must do is not stop until I reach Providence. The hull has been scraped recently, and I will lighten the ballast in Newport. Tonight I heard the news that I have been hoping for. He no longer has a local pilot on board. I will beat him to this port. As soon as the Hannah is docked, her deck becomes subject to the laws of Rhode Island. When he boards me, as he must according to the book, I will detain him."
James was laughing with glee. "Now I understand why you have lost patience with this room full of lawyers and their talk of violence. Once you detain Dudingston, any one of them should be able to delay the courts and keep him off his ship, and the ship tied to the dock for the rest of the season."
"Exactly," confirmed the captain, "The Greenes could even make their case to have the Gaspee held pending the return of the Fortune."
"So the real question is: will Dudingston fall for it?"
"All I require is that he adheres to his standing orders and to the navy's rules." The captain looked nervously over his shoulder because the angry voices in the tavern were growing in volume again. "May I leave by your back door. I do not relish pushing through that room full of drunken fools."
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MAYA’S AURA - the Redemptioner by Skye Smith
Chapter 5 - June 9, 1772, the Gaspee runs aground
Britta looked up and across the tavern room at Captain John Brown, often called Big John in this town, and his son and a cousin who were sitting in the tavern with some of their bully boys and the Newport ship owner Jacob Greene. They were the only customers at this time of day. The afternoon busy period would not start for almost an hour, once the passengers from the packet ships had disembarked.
Britta and Jon sat at the back table sharing one of the eel pies. She licked her lips and closed her eyes and could almost believe she was back in the fens of Cambridgeshire. It must be the taste of the eel that made her memories jump to life.
Before they died, or rather, before they had been press ganged by the Royal Navy, her fathers had been eelers. It was seasonal work which earned well in the season, and allowed them to do other seasonal work like sheep shearing or unloading the coastal trading ships. She often had helped them with the eel traps. Like most eeler families, they only ate eels themselves when there were some left unsold. In other words, almost never.
She h
ad hate-love memories of the fens. She hated the damp. Everyone in the fens hated the damp. She loved living on an island. Their house had been built of poles and reeds and every five years they would burn it down and rebuild it. The earth and stone platform that the house stood upon was ancient, from a time before kings. Each time they rebuilt the house, they would make the platform a little wider and a little higher.
They did not own the land that the platform sat on. That was the problem. In years past, there had been a thriving village on their island in the marsh, and the entire island was owned communally by the entire village, as were the fishing pools, the forest trees, and almost everything else that a family would need in order to live well. Their local language did not even have a word for "own". The word actually meant "use". If a family needed to use something that was communal, then they simply sought the approval of the village elders.
Then the navvies arrived. They were hungry, ragged men from beyond the fens that had been hired by the local nobles to dig canals. At first the village thought the canals were for transportation, and looked forward to using their boats on them. No one from the village expected what happened next.
The marshes dried up. With them dried up the livelihood of the village. Her family was one of the last to leave. A month after her fathers were reported missing at sea, a bailiff arrived and told them they had to leave, that is, unless they could produce a piece of paper that proved that they owned the land.
Britta remembered asking her mother what paper was. She remembered huddling in their punt as mother poled them away from their island village and towards the city of Cambridge. The bailiff had told them that they would find work there. He lied. Mother sold the punt, and they started to walk. Other men from the village had told mother that there were still marsh islands to live on near the city of Bristol. Mother thought Bristol must be the next big town. It wasn't. It was a very long walk.