The Rebel Pirate

by Donna Thorland

  Her eyes fastened on his injured wrist, where his muslin bandages peeked out from the velvet cuff like a froth of antique lace. “I am sorry about your coat,” she said. “But it would not be safe for you—or us—if you were seen in it. I promise you shall have it back.”

  Less one silver button, he feared.

  The girl went on. “There is a doctor in town who is a friend. Ned will fetch him to our house.”

  “That will not be necessary,” Sparhawk said. “Put me ashore in the ship’s boat, and I will make my way to Boston and have the break attended to there.”

  “It cannot wait that long. And you cannot ride or bounce along in a carriage—if you could find one—until the bones have been set.”

  “I am not as fragile as all that, Miss Ward. And you promised to release me.”

  “In one piece. Thanks to your heroics, I cannot do that without the assistance of a physician,” she said, in the same steely voice she had used yesterday while holding a pistol on him. “If the wrist heals badly, you will be crippled for life.”

  “And if I delay, the admiral will want to know what I was doing, and whom I was with. He will want to know more about you and Mr. Cheap and Ned and the Sally than I am inclined to tell. You must let me go, for your own sake, Miss Ward.”

  Cheap, Sparhawk felt sure, was all for tipping him over the side and being done with him, but Sarah shook her head. “You saved Ned. We are in your debt. You will allow me to discharge it by bringing you to a doctor who can set your arm.”

  “Or you will order Mr. Cheap to break the other arm, I take it?”

  “If necessary,” she said.

  And Sparhawk had no doubt the rogue would do it for her.

  Cheap had called her a lady, but such a term only diminished Sarah Ward. Honor, in ladies, was defined by what they did not do. Honor, for Sarah Ward, meant keeping her word and paying her debts and protecting her family.

  Cheap guarded Sparhawk with his pistol while Ned and Sarah climbed into the boat. Sparhawk got himself down with rather more difficulty and took a seat on the bench. He watched with fascination as Ned loosed the sail and placed the line in his sister’s hand. Her other was already upon the tiller.

  She piloted the little cutter with the ease of a born sailor. Sarah Ward looked the way Sparhawk often felt on the deck of the Wasp—in tune with the canvas and wind.

  Cheap caught him staring again, and flashed that gold-toothed smile. Sparhawk turned to study the riverbank. He had never been to Salem before. He knew only that the port was firmly in the hands of the Rebels and that before the trouble it had been growing obscenely rich.

  Rosy dawn light burned away the fog as the boat made its way upriver, and James saw that it was not a city of brick like Boston. The riverbank was crowded with brightly painted clapboard houses. The sky was a crazy jumble of rooflines ancient and modern, steep and shallow, cedar and slate, and the shore below bristled with a network of private docks and small boats that bobbed gently in the current. It reminded him, with the warm light, bright colors, and flowing water, of Venice.

  A town built around the sea, and its commerce. Around domestic and foreign trade. With docks and warehouses handy for merchants who wanted to avoid customs duties.

  Sarah had not exaggerated. The admiral did drink Dutch tea. Smuggling was a way of life in America. It had been for fifty years. The colonies would have failed without it. Parliament had been passing laws for decades designed to skim all the profit out of American trade, mandating that colonial goods could be sold only to British merchants—so that British merchants could sell them at a profit to the rest of the world—and that Americans could buy only British goods, cloth and copper and household necessities. At prices that would keep them in perpetual debt, beholden to the English mercantile agents to whom they were forced to sell their fish, their lumber, their abundant rice and grains. It was but a step removed from serfdom, and anyone who thought the colonists—Englishmen themselves—would stand for it was a fool.

  For decades the Americans had for the most part been sidestepping these laws, bribing customs agents and sailing under false papers or into the Dutch free ports to trade their goods. It was a thoroughly corrupt system, grown out of corrupt laws, but it had worked. Sparhawk did not care for politics, but even he could see that suddenly trying to enforce crippling tariffs that had been largely ignored for half a century was madness on Parliament’s part.

  Here was the result. There was hardly an inch of riverfront unclaimed by private wharves—a smuggler’s best friend—until a great empty expanse loomed up on the left. It was the first brick house Sparhawk had seen in Salem, and it dominated the waterfront. It was three stories tall, five windows wide, and capped by a gaudy copper roof; the green paint on the shutters still looked wet and fresh. An abundance of carved wooden ornament crusted the brick: pilasters and swags and flowers and pineapples, executed with the greatest skill, if not the most restrained taste. And that was just the back. He could only imagine how elaborate the façade might be. A wide manicured lawn and garden ran down to a pebbled beach—the stones white, regular, and carefully raked.

  “Good God,” Sparhawk exclaimed. “What nabob lives there?”

  “Micah Wild,” Sarah said tonelessly.

  Ned opened his mouth to speak, but Sarah shook her head, and Sparhawk’s earlier, disturbing suspicions became certainties. There was more to Micah Wild’s treachery than a chest of French gold.

  • • •

  Sarah did not want to speak of Micah Wild. Even now, she could not look at his house—the house he had built for her—without feeling her chest constrict. She must have a serious word with Ned about the virtues of discretion. Their older brother’s troubles and her relationship with her former betrothed were none of Captain Sparhawk’s business. And pity was the last thing she wanted from him.

  They reached their tiny dock before the river really began to stir. She dispatched Ned to the doctor and bustled Sparhawk into the house as quietly as possible. He was obviously in pain—though he refused to admit it—and she hoped that he was too exhausted to notice the condition of her home.

  If he chanced to look in the parlor, he would see that the pale floors were scarred with nail holes and dotted with tufts of wool from the missing carpets. The windows were naked, but damaged plaster marked where the cornices had hung. The pier glasses—sold, like everything else—had printed ghostly shadows on the walls. Only her bedroom and her father’s were still properly furnished. Ned slept on a trundle in the keeping room.

  Sparhawk did notice, of course. He could hardly fail to. Even the wallpapers had been stripped and auctioned, leaving the chilly hallway leprous and scabbed. He stopped her halfway up the stairs, placed his good hand lightly over her cold fingers on the banister, and said, “Sarah, what has happened here? You said you owed this man Wild money. This is more than debt.” His eyes traveled over the naked walls and bald floors. “This is desperation.”

  “There are worse things than penury, Captain.”

  “Yes, but most of them take root there. It is shocking what you will do for a heel of bread if your family is starving.”

  He spoke as if from experience, but poverty was different for men. They could support themselves with the work of their hands, sign aboard a merchantman, load and unload cargo at the dock. Women had fewer choices, and if they were reduced to selling their labor outside their home or the confines of a family business, it was often assumed that they sold themselves as well. Still, Sarah would have taken work as a maid or a seamstress and been grateful for it; but thanks to Micah Wild, who had let it be known that he did not want to see his former betrothed scrubbing floors or taking in sewing, Sarah had no choices at all.

  She longed to talk to someone about her situation, but there was no one who would understand. Micah hadn’t just jilted her. He’d taken her best friend and confidante from her at the same tim
e. Benji had been away; Ned, too young to comprehend; and her father, too ill to burden with her unhappiness. Her neighbors and friends and school companions were kind but distant, afraid, as well they should be, to put themselves on the wrong side of Micah Wild.

  There were things she could not tell Sparhawk, but the bare outline of her story, at least, she could share. “When my father was appointed an agent for the East India Company tea, he thought he saw a safe and legal way to invest his money. A way to ensure my future.”

  “So he put his entire capital in the tea,” Sparhawk guessed.

  “Yes. When the tea was destroyed in Boston, Wild and a gang of ruffians—they called themselves a Committee of Safety—announced that they would hang as traitors anyone who sold tea in Salem. It’s in a warehouse—two shiploads bought and paid for by my father—down at the dock, rotting.”

  “The Sally is an extraordinarily fine vessel,” Sparhawk said. “Your father could have leased her out to anyone. Why this Wild?”

  “We had already borrowed money from him to keep ourselves afloat. My father would not sign the Rebel articles, so no one would invest in a new voyage with him. Except Micah Wild. He lent us the money to cargo her.”

  “And if I had not stopped you,” Sparhawk said, “you would have come home with your musket flint and your French molasses and paid Wild off.”

  He was looking up at her with great intensity, his desire to be her champion plain on his face. He would not rise so quickly to her defense if he knew the rest of her story, but she was not obligated to tell it. There was nothing to stop her, just at that moment, from basking in the warmth of his regard.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “We would have paid Wild off.” Their fortunes would have been restored, but her reputation could not be repaired.

  “What will this man do?” Sparhawk asked. There was no mistaking the concern in his voice. It warmed her, though there was nothing he could do to help.

  “Wild is a daring smuggler, and much admired in Salem. Only Elias Derby has more ships or money. And Micah is our own Sam Adams and John Hancock combined. The rich merchants and rabble on the docks love him equally well. He stirs the crowd with appeals to high ideals and common greed. They tarred and feathered a customs agent at his urging. And he has presided over beatings of Loyalists who will not sign the Rebel articles.”

  “And you fear what he will do to your family.”

  “No. You were right earlier. I fear what I will do to protect them.”

  • • •

  The doctor, when he arrived, towed along by Ned, was surprisingly young. That was Sparhawk’s first impression. A closer look revealed that Dr. Corwin—as Ned introduced him—was not so much young as youthful. He was probably near to Sparhawk’s age, but with the sort of slight build and round boyish face that would preserve the illusion of youth well into middle age. He wore a very old-fashioned wig to counteract the effect, and carried a salt-stained bag that must have seen sea service. That, at least, was reassuring.

  Corwin was more capable than Sparhawk expected. He ordered Sarah to take hold of Sparhawk’s upper arm, while he himself manipulated the bone at the wrist. “We’ll do this just like we did when Ned fell out of the tree, Sarah. You pull down and I pull up.” The doctor smiled at her. Sparhawk saw in the expression a shared history—and possibly a shared future. To his surprise, that rankled. He could not recall ever being jealous about a woman before. Certainly not one he had never bedded.

  He forgot all about such concerns when Corwin started to manipulate the breaks. It was a strange sensation, to feel his bones being pulled into place, and for about half a minute, it hurt like the devil. But then it was over, and the doctor was splinting and wrapping Sparhawk’s arm in soft new wool. There were smaller splints for two of his fingers as well.

  The short ordeal left him exhausted, but relieved. His arm no longer hung crooked at his side, and he could curl and uncurl his unbroken fingers, a good sign, or so the doctor told him.

  “You won’t feel like it,” Corwin said as he tied the bandages, “but you should eat something. A chop or a beefsteak. Rare and bloody. Then rest.”

  “When can I travel?”

  The doctor shrugged. “A week.”

  “I cannot stay here a week.”

  “If you could get a ship,” the doctor said, “you could travel tomorrow. But you won’t find a king’s vessel in this harbor. You are lucky to have found a doctor. Our other sawbones in Salem is the brother of Joseph Warren, and just as radical. The Rebels ran the customs men out of town last September. They have sunk hulks in the harbor so that British ships cannot enter without a pilot, and the guns that Colonel Leslie failed to capture from the Rebels in February have been mounted on Juniper Point and Winter Island.”

  “By coach, then,” Sparhawk said.

  “The Wards and the Corwins are known Loyalists. The Patriots of Salem are unlikely to lend either of us a coach,” said Corwin.

  “I can get one,” said Sarah.

  Corwin shot her a speaking glance that Sparhawk could not interpret.

  She ignored it. “But it can hardly drive up to our door in the middle of the day without attracting attention.”

  “She’s right,” Corwin acknowledged. “We take a risk, both of us, helping you. Sentiment against the navy is running gallows high in Salem just now. Your squadron has been seizing men and cargo off Cape Ann ships with the abandon of buccaneers. The Port Act might have been meant to punish Boston, but it has kindled rebellion up and down the whole coast. In February, your Admiral Graves swept the Marblehead docks with a press gang and carried off twenty-seven seamen—husbands and fathers—crippling the fishing fleet. So when a box of candles intended for the admiral came their way, the selectmen there impounded it. In response, your admiral sent the Lively to Marblehead Harbor and threatened to shell the town.”

  “You sound,” said Sparhawk, “as though you sympathize with the Rebels.”

  “We asked for the protection of government, for the king’s ships and the king’s soldiers to safeguard our property from the Rebels, not kidnap our young men and confiscate our goods to line their own pockets with prize money. If the Committee of Safety discovers you here, it will go hard—very hard—on Sarah and her father. Not to mention,” he added, brightening, “that the Sons of Liberty will likely take you for a spy and string you up from the nearest tree.”

  His cheer, Sparhawk saw, was not entirely in jest. The good doctor did not like a fox in his henhouse.

  James reminded himself that he could not have Sarah Ward. He was not his father. He would not seduce a vulnerable girl. An affair with a naval officer—and there was nothing more he could offer her—would be unlikely to improve her situation. Given the town’s political climate, if they were discovered, it would only put her in greater jeopardy. And that would be a poor way to repay her care of him.

  Yes, the good doctor was an altogether better choice for Sarah Ward.

  “Beefsteak or a chop,” Corwin repeated. “My wife has a rack in her larder. I am certain we can spare something for you.”

  Or perhaps not.

  The doctor left. Sarah went with him, in search of a rig, and Sparhawk reclined on the four-poster and considered his prospects.

  The door creaked open. Ned hovered on the threshold, looking nervously over his shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” Sparhawk assured him. “She has gone to find me a coach.”

  Ned came into the room. “She wouldn’t like me telling you, but everyone in town knows, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t. And she likes you. I can tell.”

  She did like him. He could tell. And she mistrusted herself with him. He’d seen that on the Sally when she had become so brisk and businesslike after the allusions to her ration of grog.

  A mutual attraction then, but not like so many of the others he had known, based entirely on physical appe
al. “I like her too, Ned, but I’m not free to court your sister.”

  “Why not? You aren’t married, are you? Everyone who likes my sister is married.”

  “No,” he said carefully, “I’m not married, but I’m not free to marry either. I would, however, like to help her.”

  Ned’s eyes narrowed, and he looked very much like his sister when she was suspicious. “So do all the married men who like her. She doesn’t need that kind of help.”

  Had Sparhawk been so worldly at that age? He had known what his mother was doing with her visitors, but he hadn’t really understood it, not until later.

  “No,” Sparhawk agreed. “She doesn’t. But perhaps I can aid in some other way. Tell me about Wild.”

  “She was engaged to him,” Ned said. “Until we lost all our money in that business with the tea. Then he married her best friend instead.”

  • • •

  There was only one person in Salem who might lend Sarah Ward a carriage: Elizabeth Wild.

  Dr. Corwin, of course, had been right. If Sparhawk was discovered in their home, the Sons of Liberty would hang him.

  And punish the Wards for harboring a spy.

  She had little choice but to apply to her friend and rival for aid.

  Sarah had always believed that there was no better childhood than to be the daughter of a ship’s captain. She had been born on the Charming Sally—though the schooner’s name had been the Sea Witch then. She had taken her first steps upon its deck, to the despair of her mother, who worried about the prospects of a daughter with a sailor’s rolling gait.

  Sarah had learned to climb the Sea Witch’s rigging the way other children learned to climb trees, only trees were not peopled with sailors who spoke six different languages and knew where tea and pepper and ambergris came from and how to carve whalebone into a pie crimper with a picture of the king on the handle. And how to pick pockets.

  Her playmates had been her brothers and the Sea Witches, and her chores had been those of a hand. She reefed sails and cooked porridge on a galley stove and got drunk for the first time in her life not on punch or brandy but on sailor’s grog.