On the farm Caroline helped Mother, who at first had been horrified by the idea, saying Caroline was too much of a lady to work on the farm. Caroline had just laughed and insisted. When I had watched her stride across the same yard where I had first seen her sitting astride her horse, now wearing a crisp white bonnet, work boots, a smock and apron, I’d had a proud feeling. Now when I saw her in workclothes it reminded me of my own failings as a man.
What made it worse somehow was that Caroline didn’t seem to mind; it was as though she was the only person in the area who did not see her current position as a descent down the social ladder. Everybody else did, and none felt it more keenly than me.
‘Can I get you another ale?’ I recognized the voice that came from behind me and turned to see him there: Emmett Scott, Caroline’s father. I’d last seen him at the wedding when he refused his daughter her dowry. Now he was offering his hated son-in-law a drink. That’s the thing about the drink, though. When you’re into the drink like I was – when you watch the level of your ale fall and wonder where your next one is coming from – you’ll take a fresh mug from anyone. Even Emmett Scott. Your sworn enemy. A man who hated you almost as much as you hated him.
So I accepted his offer of an ale, and he bought his own, and pulled up a stool, which scraped on the flagstones as he sat down.
You remember Emmett Scott’s expression? That of a man sucking a lemon. Now, talking to me, the hated Edward Kenway, you’d have to say he looked even more pained. The tavern was somewhere I felt completely at home, an environment in which I could lose myself, but it didn’t suit him at all. Every now and then he would glance over one shoulder, then the other, like he was frightened of being suddenly attacked from behind.
‘I don’t think we’ve ever had a chance to talk,’ he said. And I made a short scoffing laugh in reply.
‘Your appearance at the wedding put paid to that, did it not?’
Of course the booze had loosened my tongue, made me brave. That and the fact that in the battle to win his daughter I had won. Her heart, after all, belonged to me. And there was no greater evidence of her devotion to me than the fact that she had given up so much to be with me. Even he must have seen that.
‘We’re both men of the world, Edward,’ he said simply, and you could see he was trying to make himself seem in charge. But I saw through him. I saw what he really was: a frightened nasty man, browbeaten in business, who kicked downwards, who probably beat his servants and his wife, who assumed the likes of me ought to be bowing and scraping to him as my mother and father had (and I had a twinge of rage to remember it) at the wedding.
‘How about we do a deal like businessmen?’
I took a long slug of my ale and held his eyes. ‘What did you have in mind, father-in-law of mine?’
His face hardened. ‘You walk out on her. You throw her out. Whatever you want. You set her free. Send her back to me.’
‘And if I do?’
‘I’ll make you a rich man.’
I drained the rest of my ale. He nodded towards it with questioning eyes and I said yes, waited while he fetched another one, then drank it down, almost in one go. The room was beginning to spin.
‘Well, you know what you can do with your offer, don’t you?’
‘Edward,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘you and I both know you can’t provide for my daughter. You and I both know you sit here in despair because you can’t provide for my daughter. You love her, I know that, because I was once like you, a man of no qualities.’
I looked at him with my teeth clenched. ‘No qualities?’
‘Oh, it’s true,’ he spat, sitting back. ‘You’re a sheep farmer, boy.’
‘What happened to “Edward”? I thought you were talking to me like an equal.’
‘An equal? There will never be a day when you will be equal to me and you know it.’
‘You’re wrong. I have plans.’
‘I’ve heard about your plans. Privateering. Becoming a man of substance on the high seas. You don’t have it in you, Edward Kenway.’
‘I do.’
‘You don’t have the moral fibre. I am offering you a way out of the hole you have dug for yourself, boy, I suggest you think about it very hard.’
I sank the rest of my ale. ‘How about I think about it over another drink?’
‘As you wish.’
A fresh tankard materialized on the table in front of me and I set to making it a thing of history, my mind reeling at the same time. He was right. This was the most devastating thing about the whole conversation. Emmett Scott was right. I loved Caroline yet could not provide for her. And if I truly was a dutiful husband then I would accept his offer.
‘She doesn’t want me to go away,’ I said.
‘And you want to?’
‘I want for her to support my plans.’
‘She never will.’
‘I can but hope.’
‘If she loves you as she says, she never will.’
Even in my drunken state I could not fault his logic. I knew he was right. He knew he was right.
‘You have made enemies, Edward Kenway. Many enemies. Some of them powerful. Why do you think those enemies haven’t taken their revenge on you?’
‘They’re frightened?’ A drunken arrogance in my voice.
He scoffed. ‘Of course they’re not frightened. They leave you alone because of Caroline.’
‘Then if I was to accept your offer there would be nothing to stop my enemies from attacking me?’
‘Nothing but my protection.’
I wasn’t sure about that.
I sank another ale; he sank deeper into despondency. He was still there at the end of the night, his very presence reminding me how far my choices had shrunk.
When I tried to stand to leave my legs almost gave way and I had to grab the side of the table just to remain on my feet. Caroline’s father, a disgusted look on his face, came to help me and before I knew it he was taking me home, though not because he wanted to see me safe, but because he wanted to make sure Caroline saw me in my drunken state, which indeed she did as I rolled in laughing. Emmett Scott puffed up and told her, ‘This tosspot is a ruined man, Caroline. Unfit for life on land, much less at sea. If he goes to the West Indies, it’s you who will suffer.’
‘Father … Father.’
She was sobbing, so upset and then as I lay on the bed I saw his boots move off and he was gone.
‘That old muck worm,’ I managed. ‘He’s wrong about me.’
‘I hope it so,’ she replied.
I let my drunken imagination carry me away. ‘You believe me, don’t you? Can you not see me, standing out there on the deck of a ship sliding into port. And there I am, a man of quality … With a thousand doubloons spilling from my pockets like drops of rain. I can see it.’
When I looked at her she was shaking her head. She couldn’t see it.
And when I sobered up the next day, neither could I.
It was only a matter of time, I suppose. My lack of prospects became like another person in the marriage. I reviewed my options. Emmett Scott offering me money in return for having his daughter back. My dreams of sailing away.
Both of them involved breaking Caroline’s heart.
11
The next day I went back to see Emmett Scott, returning to Hawkins Lane, where I knocked on the door to request an audience. Who should answer, but Rose?
‘Mr Kenway,’ she said, surprised and going slightly red. There was a moment of awkwardness, and then I was being asked to wait, and then, shortly after that, was led to Emmett Scott’s study, a room dominated by a desk in its centre, wood panelling giving it a dark, serious atmosphere. He stood in front of his desk, and, in the gloom, with his dark hair, his cadaverous look and dark, hollowed-out cheeks he looked like a crow.
‘You have thought my offer over, then?’ he said.
‘I have,’ I replied, ‘and felt it best to tell you my decision as soon as possible.’
&nb
sp; He folded his arms and his face cracked into a triumphant smirk, ‘You come to make your demands, then? How much is my daughter worth?’
‘How much were you willing to pay?’
‘Were?’
It was my turn to smile, though I was careful not to overdo it. He was dangerous, Emmett Scott. I was playing a dangerous game with a dangerous man.
‘That’s right. I have decided to go to the West Indies.’
I knew where I could reach Dylan Wallace. I had given Caroline the news.
‘I see.’
He seemed to think, tapping his fingertips together.
‘But you don’t intend to stay away permanently?’
‘No.’
‘This was not the terms of my offer.’
‘Not quite the terms of your offer, no,’ I said. ‘In effect, a counter-offer. A measure I hope will find your favour. I am a Kenway, Mr Scott; I have my pride. That I hope you will understand. Understand too that I love your daughter, however much that fact may ail you, and I wish nothing but the best for her. I aim to return from my travels a rich man and with my fortune give Caroline the life she deserves. A life, I’m sure, you would wish for her.’
He was nodding, though the purse of his lips betrayed his utter contempt for the notion.
‘And?’
‘I give you my word I will not return to these shores until I am a rich man.’
‘I see.’
‘And I give you my word I will not tell Caroline that you attempted to buy her back.’
He darkened. ‘I see.’
‘I ask only to be given the opportunity to make my fortune – to provide for Caroline in the manner to which she has become accustomed.’
‘You will still be her husband – it is not what I wanted.’
‘You think me a good-for-nothing, not fit to be her husband. I hope to prove you wrong. While I am away you will no doubt see more of Caroline. Perhaps if your hatred of me runs so deeply you might use the opportunity to poison her against me. The point is, you would have ample opportunity. Moreover, I might die while at sea, in which case she is returned to you for ever: a young widow, still at an eligible age. That is my deal. In return I ask only that you allow me to try to make something of myself unhindered.’
He nodded, considering the idea, perhaps savouring the thought of me dying while at sea.
12
Dylan Wallace assigned me to the crew of the Emperor, which was docked in Bristol harbour and leaving in two days. I returned home and told my mother, father and Caroline.
There were tears, of course, and recriminations and pleas to stay, but I was firm in my resolve, and after I had broken my news, Caroline, distraught, left. She needed time to think, she said, and we stood in the yard and watched her gallop away – to her family, where at least she would give the news to Emmett Scott, who would know I was fulfilling my part of the deal. I could only hope – or, should I say, I hoped at the time – that he would fulfil his part of the deal, too.
Sitting here talking to you now, all these years later, well, it has to be said that I don’t know whether he did. But I will. Shortly, I will. And there will be a day of reckoning …
But not then. Then I was young, stupid, arrogant and boastful. I was so boastful that once Caroline was away I took to the taverns again, and perhaps found that some of my old liveliness had returned as I told all who would listen that I was to sail away, and that Mr and Mrs Edward Kenway would soon be a rich couple thanks to my endeavours on the high seas. I took great delight in their sneering looks, their rejoinders that I was too big for my boots or did not have enough character for the task; that I would soon return with my tail between my legs; that I was letting down my father.
Not once did I let my grin slip. My knowing grin. My grin that said, ‘You’ll see.’
But even with the booze inside me and my departure a day or so away – or maybe even because of those things – I still took their words to heart. I asked myself, Did I really have enough of a man inside me to survive the life of the privateer. Was I going to return with my tail between my legs? And, yes, I knew that I might die.
And, also, they were right: I was letting my father down. I’d seen the disappointment in his eyes the moment I delivered the news and it had remained there since. It was a sadness, perhaps that his dream of running the farm together – fading as it must have been – had finally been dashed for good. I was not just leaving to embrace a new life but wholeheartedly rejecting my old one. The life he had built for himself, my mother and me. I was rejecting it. I’d decided I was too good for it.
Perhaps I never gave enough thought to the effect that all of this might have on Caroline’s relationship with my mother and father, but, looking back now, it is ludicrous to me to have expected her to simply remain at the farm.
One night, I returned home to find her dressed up.
‘Where are you going?’ I slurred, having spent most of the evening in a tavern.
She was unable to meet my gaze. By her feet was a bedsheet tied into a bulging parcel, somehow at odds with her attire, which as I focused on her I realized was more smart than usual.
‘No, I …’ Finally her eyes met mine. ‘My parents have asked me to go and live with them. And I’d like to.’
‘What do you mean, “live with them”? You live here. With me.’
She told me that I shouldn’t have given up work with Father. I should have been happy with what I had.
I should have been happy with her.
Through a fog of ale I tried to tell her that I was happy with her. That everything I was doing I was doing for her. She had been talking to her parents while she was away, of course, and while I had expected her father to begin poisoning her against me, that muck worm, I hadn’t expected him to start quite so soon.
‘Decent wage?’ I raged. ‘That job was near as dammit to robbery. You want to be married to a peasant the whole of your life?’
I had spoken too loudly. A look passed between us and I cringed to think of my father hearing. And then she was leaving. And I was calling after her, still trying to persuade her to stay.
To no avail, and the next morning, when I’d sobered up and recalled the events of the night before, Mother and Father were brooding, staring at me with recriminatory looks. Not only had they liked – I’d go as far as saying loved – Caroline, because Mother had lost a daughter many years ago, so to her Caroline was the daughter she never had, but she was also a help around the farm, and did it for minimal wages. To help out, so she said …
‘Maybe before the baby arrives?’ my mother would say and give my grinning father a nudge in the ribs, to which Caroline would blush to her roots and reply, ‘Maybe.’
Well, we were trying. And there’d be an end to that when I was away on my travels, of course. And apart from being well-liked and a help on the farm, another female to have around the place, she’d also been helping my mother with her numbers and letters.
Now she was gone – gone because I had not been content with my lot. Gone because I wanted adventure. Because the drink was no longer doing anything to stave off boredom.
Why couldn’t I be happy with her? she’d asked. I was happy with her.
Why couldn’t I be happy with my life? she’d asked. But I wasn’t happy with my life.
I went to see her, to try to persuade her to change her mind. As far as I was concerned she was still my wife, I was still her husband, and what I was doing was for the good of the marriage, for the good of both of us, not just me.
(And I think I kidded myself that was true. And maybe to some small degree it was true. But I knew, and probably she knew, too, that while of course I wanted to provide for her, I also wanted to see the world beyond Bristol.)
It did no good. She told me she was worried about me being hurt. I replied that I would be careful; that I would return with coin or send for her. I told her I needed her faith, but my appeals fell on deaf ears.
It was the day I was due to lea
ve, and I left them and I packed my bags, slung them over my horse and went, with those very same recriminatory looks boring into my back, stabbing at me like arrows. And I rode into the dark as evening fell with a heavy heart, and there found the Emperor. But instead of the expected industry, the ship due to sail the following morning, I found it near deserted. The only people present were a group of six men who I took to be deckhands, who sat gambling with leather flasks of rum close at hand, casks for chairs, a crate for a dice table.
I looked from them to the Emperor. A refitted merchant ship, she was riding high in the water. The decks were empty, none of the lamps were lit and the railings shone in the moonlight. A sleeping giant, she was, and despite feeling perplexed at the lack of activity I was still in awe of her size and stature. On those decks I would serve. On hammocks in quarters below decks I would sleep. The masts I would climb. I was looking at my new home.
One of the men eyed me carefully. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’ he said.
I swallowed, feeling very young and inexperienced and suddenly, tragically wondering if everything they said about me – Caroline’s father, the drinkers in the taverns, even Caroline herself – might be true. That, actually, I might not be cut out for life at sea.
‘I’m here to join up,’ I said. ‘Sent here by Dylan Wallace.’
A snicker ran through the group of four and each of them looked at me with an even greater interest. ‘Dylan Wallace, the recruitment man, eh?’ said the first. ‘He’s sent one or two to us before. What is it you can do, boy?’
‘Mr Wallace thought I would be material enough to serve,’ I said, hoping I sounded more confident and able than I felt.
‘How’s your eyesight?’ said one.
‘My eyesight is fine.’
‘Do you have a head for heights?’
I knew what they meant now, as they pointed up to the highest point of the Emperor’s rigging, the crow’s-nest, home to the lookout.
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