The Rebel Pirate

by Donna Thorland

  This was different.

  Sarah crossed the room. She did not look directly at the captain, but kept track of him out of the corner of her eye. She slowed her pace so that just as he crossed her path, she collided with his right shoulder—and slipped her hand into his left pocket.

  He looked right, as she had hoped, as Mr. Cheap had told her a mark always would. Bump right and dive left. Her fingers curled around the strings of his purse. He didn’t feel it. She drew her hand up, smooth and quick, the way Mr. Cheap had taught her.

  Too quick. The strings snapped. The purse plummeted to the floor and burst open, sending coins scuttling across the boards.

  The fusilier, dull with drink, stared down at the floor. Then he looked at Sarah. “She’s picked my pocket.”

  Sarah stepped back. “You are drunk, sir.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ned tense—and then remember his promise to stay out of it.

  “Call the watch,” suggested the stockiest, an ensign with a high-pitched child’s voice and a public school accent.

  “I did not touch his purse.” She used the older-sister tones that always worked on Ned. “It fell out of his pocket when he walked into me.”

  “It did not,” said the affronted officer.

  “Call the watch,” repeated the ensign. “Let them put her in the stocks.”

  “Yes,” said Sarah. “Call the watch.” Given the emotional climate of the city, they’d take her word over that of the regulars.

  And then because they were staring at her with the same haughty dislike she had endured in school, because she was an Englishwoman and a friend of government and entitled to the benefit of doubt—and because they had burned a house like hers, she added, “The watch will enjoy teaching clumsy Redcoats manners.”

  A mistake. She knew it at once. The fusilier captain bristled. The ensign curled his child’s lip.

  And the tallest of them, the boy who had bragged about the brutality of his men in Menotomy, stepped forward and said in cool, clipped tones, “Don’t call the watch.”

  Sarah met his cold, glittering eyes and knew real fear.

  He plucked a coin out of his purse and tossed it to the ensign. “Speak us a room, Harry,” he said.

  “What for?” asked Harry, catching the coin and turning it over in his palm.

  “This girl,” he replied, “needs a lesson the watch won’t teach her.”

  Ten

  Sparhawk watched Margaret Kemble Gage’s pretty face lose all color.

  A few minutes later he was shown into a smaller paneled study. Dark and cool, the chamber smelled of wet dog, no doubt from the three muddy spaniels lying on the carpet. Thomas Gage rose to greet him and introduced his brother-in-law, Stephen Kemble, who also, Sparhawk knew, happened to be his chief intelligence officer.

  They were both polite but wary. They did not know Sparhawk. He was a man with a certain reputation where women were concerned, and he had obtained entry by using the general’s beautiful wife. And the general had lately quarreled with Sparhawk’s commanding officer.

  James stepped over the dogs to take the chair offered, sat, and related his interview with the admiral.

  Gage and his brother-in-law listened attentively.

  When he was done, the general sighed and said, “I thank you for telling me this, Captain. It obliges me to remonstrate with the admiral. I am sorry to say that if you do not report to the Somerset tomorrow, I can do nothing to protect you from his wrath.”

  Sparhawk had feared as much. He had come anyway. So he plowed on. “Graves is right about the squadron,” he said. “It cannot supply the city if the Rebels tighten the siege. Charlestown and Roxbury must be taken, or Boston will starve.”

  “The point,” said Gage, “has not escaped me. However, they are fifteen thousand, and they have more veterans among their militia than I have among my four thousand regulars. I have already warned the selectmen of Charlestown that if they allow the militia to dig in on their hills, I will be forced to fire upon the town. It has so far sufficed as a deterrent.”

  “Graves will not wait for them to dig in,” Sparhawk said. “He is determined to burn Charlestown to the ground now. Somerset has the guns to do the job in an hour. The population should be ordered to evacuate. My refusal is only the inevitable delayed. If I do not report for duty tomorrow, the admiral will find another, more agreeable captain to do his bidding.”

  “You see how these people have reacted to a skirmish in the woods,” said Gage. “Imagine what they would do if they believed we were plotting to destroy one of their towns.”

  “But we are—or the admiral is, at any rate.”

  “The army can barely hold Boston,” replied Gage. “The Rebels are led by shrewd propagandists. If Adams or one of his ilk got wind of this business, they could instigate a riot we do not have the men to quell.”

  Kemble leaned forward in his chair. He had his sister’s keen gaze and dark good looks. “Do you mean to report to the Somerset tomorrow?”

  If he did, he would be free to make good on his promise to Sarah Ward, to enjoy her company at his table and in his bed all summer long and longer. If he did not, she would end in the keeping of Micah Wild. The thought turned his stomach.

  “I have an obligation,” he said, “to a lady. If I am arrested, I will not be able to keep it. Her family are Loyalists, hard-pressed in Rebel Salem. They helped me escape. I would like to send her a message. And money. Along with her father’s pistols.”

  “Write her a letter,” said the general, rising. “I have a mind to send a scout into those parts. He will deliver it for you, along with any funds you entrust to him.”

  “He will find the countryside up in arms,” said Sparhawk, and described his troubling journey to Boston.

  “Our scout is a resourceful man,” said Kemble.

  No doubt their resourceful man was a spy.

  Sparhawk knew better than to try to leave Boston for his usual rooms at the Three Cranes—he suspected he had already been followed to Province House by a sailor off the Preston—so he gave the general his direction at the Golden Ball. On his way out of the house, Lady Gage stopped him and drew him into the privacy of her sitting room.

  “You met with my husband,” she said.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “My brother noticed that you are injured.”

  Sparhawk had taken pains to hide his splint beneath the lace of his cuff, but he doubted that Stephen Kemble missed much. “I broke my arm escaping from the Rebels,” he said. It was almost true. “But I received excellent care from the friends of government who helped me escape.” And that was technically not a lie.

  “Even so,” she said, “I would like to send my doctor to look at you. May he call on you this evening?”

  “There is no need.”

  She insisted, and since he was under an obligation to her and her husband, Sparhawk agreed.

  At the Golden Ball he did his best to put his affairs in order. When the general’s “scout”—Sparhawk was certain the man was a spy—called, he was ready with his letter, a purse of gold drawn from the funds he kept with his prize agent, and Abednego Ward’s pistols and cutlass.

  The man’s name was DeBerniere, and he was in appearance the single most forgettable person Sparhawk had ever encountered.

  He asked Sparhawk to describe the mood in Salem.

  “I discovered similar conditions in the towns to the west the last time I ventured out of the city,” said DeBerniere. “You were lucky to escape with your life. How on earth did you manage to stay hidden?”

  “A secret staircase, if you can believe it,” replied Sparhawk. He described the Ward house so that DeBerniere might find it.

  “Very common in these older dwellings,” said DeBerniere. In a few strokes he sketched, from Sparhawk’s spare details, an amazing likeness
of the Ward place. Sparhawk said as much.

  “It is a useful talent,” replied the spy. “How did you journey safe through the Rebel lines?” he asked.

  Sparhawk wondered if the fellow disguised his speech when he traveled among the Americans. The man had an aristocratic public school accent that would betray him if he opened his mouth. James found he rather missed Sarah’s Yankee twang.

  “The Rebels,” Sparhawk replied, “thought I had been injured in their cause.” He sloughed off his coat to reveal his splint.

  DeBerniere smiled—a crafty expression—and Sparhawk suspected that tomorrow this utterly forgettable man would be sporting something similar.

  A little while later the spy left and Sparhawk ate a meal, such as it was, prepared by the Golden Ball’s kitchen. Cabbage and salt pork. Almost as bad as the fare on the Wasp. It was past seven when someone scratched at his door and a gentleman in a velvet suit with a pale blue silk embroidered waistcoat and sleeves dripping with Mechlin lace introduced himself as Lady Gage’s doctor. He was quite the most exquisite physician Sparhawk had ever encountered, and he did not give his name.

  Sparhawk admitted him, then apologized. “I fear you will regret taking the time to call on me. My arm is giving me very little trouble, apart from dressing.”

  “That is about as useful to me as my professional opinion on rigging would be to you,” said the doctor, insufferable as most physicians. “Though in truth I have come about your other difficulties. I take it, sir, you are a friend to America.”

  Sparhawk did not reply all at once. He was the dispossessed heir to an English barony, but he had been born in the New World, and not set foot on English soil until he was fifteen and a midshipman. “I am an officer of the king,” he said finally.

  “One who will not burn an American port.”

  “One who will not burn a British port. It is my duty to protect the king’s subjects and their property.” If it was determined that the Americans were no longer the king’s subjects, Sparhawk was less certain how the king would feel about their property—and where his own loyalties would lie.

  “But you do not wish to see Charlestown burned.”

  “Neither does General Gage,” countered Sparhawk.

  “No, but Gage will not be able to stop the admiral if he can find an officer willing to carry out his orders. That is why I have come. Graves will not risk the careers of his nephews on such a gambit. That is three of his captains accounted for.”

  “Four,” amended Sparhawk. “He has given my Wasp to Francis Graves.”

  “Four, then,” said the doctor. “We must know if there are any other officers in the squadron who might be inclined to carry out the admiral’s orders.”

  “By ‘we,’ I presume you do not mean the general and his staff.”

  “No,” said the doctor.

  “You are asking me to commit treason.”

  “You strike me as a thoughtful man, Captain Sparhawk. Britain has broken the bonds of loyalty that tied America to her. Your admiral has done likewise with you. He would use you for his purposes and see you hang if his superiors censured him.”

  “I have served under bad commanders before,” said Sparhawk. “They are not the navy. And I would not see any of my brother officers assassinated.”

  The doctor bristled. “You insult me, sir.”

  “That was not my intention,” said Sparhawk. “Your colleagues in Salem threatened to burn an old man and his daughters out of their house in pursuit of me.”

  “As you say, bad officers are not the navy. And Micah Wild is not America.”

  There came a scratch at the door, followed by the voice of Sparhawk’s landlady. “There is a party of marines in the street below, Captain Sparhawk. They demand I let them in.”

  “Are they here for you?” Sparhawk asked his unnamed guest.

  The doctor considered. “Possibly. Or perhaps Admiral Graves has already learned of your visit to the general. In any case, it is time I took my leave.”

  Sparhawk’s visitor turned to the window and raised the sash.

  “Dr. Warren,” said Sparhawk, pleased when the man turned and confirmed his guess. A Rebel, and a famous one, he was the man behind the Suffolk Resolves that had so moved Burke. He was also the orator, just that March, whose theatrics on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre—he’d arrived at the meetinghouse dressed in a toga—had so enraged the army. Their dislike of Warren had risen to a fever pitch over the stunt. He was, by their lights, a damned seditious bastard. He would be mad to take the field against the king’s troops now. Yet Sparhawk had never heard anyone impugn the man’s honor.

  “Moore and Mowat,” Sparhawk said, naming two officers in the squadron. “They are hotheads. Moore is not fit to command a tender, and I doubt Graves would trust him with the guns of the Somerset. Mowat is another matter altogether.”

  Warren considered a moment, then said, “Men of such temperaments often have difficulty with supplies, misunderstandings with merchants and such, that can interfere with their duties and delay their sailing or entangle them in civil proceedings for days, if not weeks on end.”

  “Yes,” said Sparhawk, relieved that his estimate of Warren had been correct. “I believe that to be so.”

  James heard feet upon the stair, the clank of cartridge boxes and bayonets.

  Warren nodded, climbed out onto the roof, and paused. “You might come with me. Talent, not interest, determines a man’s rank in America. And we have need of a man with your talents.”

  “Good evening, Dr. Warren,” said Sparhawk. He closed the window and drew the drapes, and by the time the door burst open and the marines stormed in, there was no sign he had entertained a visitor.

  Unfortunately, they had not come for the American.

  Eleven

  Sarah took a step away from the blond Redcoat with the cold eyes, but the fusilier whose pocket she had picked moved to cut off her retreat.

  “Leave the girl alone,” said a voice resonant with the unquestioned authority of the quarterdeck.

  Sarah turned toward the speaker and saw that it was the naval officer she had earlier observed taking his meal and reading his paper. He was standing in front of his table now, his posture relaxed, but it was a deceptive stance. His hand rested lightly on his hanger sword, an implied but not overt threat.

  “Your purse fell out of your pocket when you mauled the lady,” he said. “I suggest you apologize.”

  “I will not,” said the fusilier captain.

  “That is Trent,” said the boy with the cruel eyes, the one who had wanted to teach Sarah a lesson. A note of caution had entered his voice.

  But the fusilier didn’t hear it. “I don’t care who the devil he is. He can go hang. She’s a pickle pocket. A pock picket. Pox on it, you know what I mean.”

  “Pickpockets do not dress in travel-stained silk petticoats and lace,” said the man called Trent. “The lady is one of the Loyalists the army is in Boston to defend. You, sir, are three sheets to the wind, and dropped your purse. Apologize and we will say no more of it.”

  A space formed around the fusilier officer. He looked to his friends for support but found none. Finally, he muttered, “My mistake.”

  That was good enough for Sarah, but she didn’t move. She did not know where, just yet, to run.

  “Good night, gentlemen,” said Trent. His tone was not unfriendly, but he spoke with a remarkable formality, such as only sea captains and other tyrants like the Grand Turk or Great Mogul could project.

  The fusilier’s friends took the hint and filed toward the door, but the captain could not resist a parting shot. “Thieving little slut,” he said under his breath.

  Steel whispered softly against wood. The sound stopped the soldiers in their tracks. They turned to observe this Trent, whose blade, sharp and well oiled, was now half unsheathed.

>   “For the love of God, Fairchild,” urged the cruel-eyed boy, “apologize. Again. Trent has killed seven men in duels. He has never lost.”

  A look of sick realization passed over Fairchild’s face, as detail triggered memory. “I misspoke,” he said. “Apologies.”

  A moment later the taproom was empty save for the Wards and their mysterious savior.

  “Thank you,” Sarah said.

  “Not at all. Forgive me if I am taking a liberty, but you and your family appear to be in some distress. May I offer my assistance?”

  “You already have,” she said. “And my older brother will be back shortly. He has gone in search of a friend, a naval officer,” she added, hoping it might afford her some protection from further offers of charity.

  “Then perhaps you and your father and the young man will do me the honor of sharing some small repast while you wait.”

  It might be an innocent offer, but she could not, under the circumstances, take the risk. “No, thank you.”

  He cocked his head. “Why do you assume that my intentions are less than honorable?” he asked, genuine curiosity in his voice.

  “Because you said that the lieutenant dropped his purse, but you know he did not.”

  “Ah. Yes. And you suspect that I only saved you from rape so I could blackmail you into my bed.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I flatter myself there are easier ways to get a pretty girl under me.”

  He was rich and handsome, so that was very likely true; yet she was still wary. “Perhaps you have sordid tastes,” she said, unable to help herself. It was the first real kindness she had been shown in two days, and she spurned it like a beaten dog.

  “Or perhaps I saw you defend your brother from the pederast earlier and have spent the evening hoping for an opportunity to make your acquaintance. And offer you my aid, without insulting you with my charity.” He smiled. “If so, it seems I overplay my hand. I’d rather you take me for an officious philanthropist than a crafty seducer. By and large.”