The Rebel Pirate

by Donna Thorland

  “I will do that,” she said.

  Ansbach smiled. “Thank you.” He seemed at last to take in his surroundings. “And I am very grateful to Lord Polkerris for extending his hospitality to you and your family. Your brother and I are . . . very good friends . . . and it has distressed me that I was not able to come to your aid when your house was burned.”

  “Trent has been most kind to us,” she said. Without thinking, she glanced down at the embroidery canvas.

  Ansbach followed her gaze. “Forgive me,” he said, “but it seems that perhaps a closer connection between your families is imminent.”

  She must make a decision, whether to risk trusting where her brother had not. Benji had been forced to learn the habit of caution, to hide his affections, whereas Sarah had only ever been hurt by concealment. “Trent is marrying me so that Admiral Graves cannot hang me. It would be poor payment for his hospitality if you were to let anyone know of our plans, as the admiral would see me shackled in quite a different way.”

  It took Ansbach a moment to adjust to her candor. Then he said, “I am certain that is not the only reason that Trent is marrying you. And you are nothing like I thought you would be.”

  “Really? Is it the embroidery?”

  “In part,” he replied. “There is also the setting. Your brother described a tomboy who climbed rigging like a monkey, and here I find a very proper Boston lady ensconced in her fashionable parlor with embroidery silks and a sewing bag.”

  “I have a pistol in the sewing bag, if that helps.”

  “Good Lord, is that what women put in them? No wonder they’re so heavy.”

  “Will you keep our secret?” she asked.

  “I shall not breathe a word about pistols in sewing bags,” he said gravely. “Nor the other confidences you have vouchsafed me.”

  She gave him coffee, and poured as she had been taught in dame school. He hesitated when she passed him his cup, no doubt forewarned of her handicap by Benji. “Don’t worry. Someone else brewed it,” she said.

  He accepted the cup, and ate the entire plate of ginger cakes while they talked. She learned a little more of this man who had kept her brother in London for two long years. He was kind and gallant and amusing and knew ships and seamen. It was impossible not to like him, and equally impossible not to wish that Benji had never met him; that her brother might have come home and settled into a comfortable—if not wholly fulfilling—safe life.

  “I am sorry your house was burned,” Ansbach said again, “but I am glad that you met Trent. He deserves a little happiness. His first wife died too young, and his second marriage was hell. He has spent the last fifteen years looking for a fight he could not win, and failed to find it. But he is different since he met you.”

  She had known that Trent was widowed, but not that he had been married twice. She filed the information away for the future, when she could ask him more about his family.

  Ansbach left just after noon, and a little later Trent returned.

  “I have put our plans in motion,” he said, reading the letters that had arrived while he was gone. “This,” he added, passing her an opened missive, “will help us to fend off Graves in the meantime.”

  It was an invitation, of all things, to dine that afternoon with Lady Frankland, whose name still caused Sarah to flinch. “I thought Lady Frankland lived in Hopkinton,” she said.

  “She has a house in the North End as well,” said Trent. “I knew her and Harry in Lisbon. And I understand that she is sailing for England soon. She does not believe that Gage will be able to put an end to these troubles.”

  “Must we go?” Sarah asked.

  “We should. Even if Lady Frankland believes you are my mistress, she will not scorn you. Not only do you share a common childhood on the North Shore, but she was Harry’s mistress long before she was Harry’s wife. Now, of course, she is a respectable widow, and attending on her together will remind Graves that he cannot touch you without provoking me.”

  “In dame school,” Sarah said, “the girls used to call me ‘Lady Frankland,’ because they thought me as uncouth as barefoot Agnes Surriage. Pregnant at fourteen with a bastard in her belly and no better than she ought to be.”

  Trent’s black brows rose. “Do you know how barefoot Agnes Surriage got Harry Frankland, baronet, to marry her after ten years as his mistress?”

  “No.” She had never thought to ask.

  Trent smiled. “It is a tale worth telling. They were in Lisbon in ’fifty-five. Sir Harry had paid Agnes off with jewelry, intending to leave her in Portugal to find a new protector. He was on his way to the church to marry an English girl from a good family when the great earthquake struck. His horses were killed instantly, and Harry was buried alive in the rubble. His driver ran off. Agnes knew—as the discarded mother of his child, how could she forget?—where he was going that day, and she ran through the streets searching for him. She found the carriage, and not knowing whether Harry was alive or dead, with no thought to her own future, she used the jewelry Harry had bought her—her entire fortune, really—to induce the locals to dig him out. Your Marblehead serving girl was a heroine of sorts—certainly Harry’s. He married her the next day. And I will lay odds that not a single one of the sharp-tongued harridans who treated you cruelly in school has since traveled as far or lived as boldly as barefoot Agnes Surriage.”

  She had never thought of it that way.

  Lady Frankland’s home in the North End was a far grander structure than the modest house Sparhawk had bought her, but such was the motley heterogenous character of the neighborhood that it was only a few twisting blocks away. Three stories with a dormered fourth and a slate roof, it had to be one of the largest homes in Boston.

  Lady Frankland herself was difficult to imagine as the saucy serving girl who had beguiled a baronet, though Sarah thought she might detect some of the fortitude of the heroine of Lisbon in her forthright manner. Near fifty, plump, and upholstered in an expensive but unflattering silk damask that made her look like a sofa, she was nothing if not comfortable in her skin. She ribbed Trent for not calling on her sooner, quizzed Sarah on their possible Salem and Marblehead connections, and complained mightily about the ungrateful Rebels of Hopkinton, who neglected work on her plantation and thought nothing of leaving their labor to play at revolutions.

  “My income,” said the old lady, “is quite halved. I cannot live on it. There is no one left to plant at Hopkinton. And they wanted my butter and my beef for their ragtag army, but why should I sell it to them when General Gage will pay double for it? Of course the rabble will not let me sell to General Gage, and they threaten to take my property from me if I try to do so.”

  “Rebels burned Miss Ward’s house down,” said Trent, by way of commiseration.

  “They confiscated my nephew’s house,” said Lady Frankland, not to be outdone. “No small property either. You would know it, if you are from Salem, Miss Ward. A fine brick manse with much ornamental carving. Fourteen rooms, and every one of them with a fireplace. A very industrious young man. I did not even know of the connection until the poor boy turned up on my doorstep, with barely the clothes upon his back. These madcaps speak of the rights of Englishmen and then trample the right to the one thing they hold most dear: property. The local ‘Committee of Safety’ took his home and ships from him. All because he sold one vessel and a few spars to the admiral.”

  Sarah knew before the door opened who this long-lost nephew must be.

  Micah Wild was much as Sarah remembered him, and it was easy to see how he had charmed an old lady into believing him a relation. He had abandoned the Rebel rage militaire in favor of a silk suit in a becoming shade of cocoa, cut to flatter his compact, muscular frame. She took some satisfaction in his split lip and the cut on his cheek that he had tried to conceal with a strategically rolled curl.

  If Trent recalled the name when Lady Fr
ankland introduced her nephew, he gave no sign of it. Micah murmured something polite and noncommittal about knowing Miss Ward’s family. And Sarah nodded and murmured something equally civil and noncommittal about being sure that was so.

  Lady Frankland told them how the Rebels had seized the powder and musket she had brought with her for protection while traveling, and professed her intention of trying to buy another off the starving soldiery, who were said to be selling their weapons to feed their families. Trent advised her against it. She waved this away and begged his counsel on how best to pack her household for the sea journey. He agreed to accompany her out to the barn, where her goods from Hopkinton were stored.

  Naturally he offered the old lady his arm, and just as naturally she took it. Which left Micah Wild offering Sarah his arm. She was loath to suffer the contact, thought they should repel each other like two magnets—she and this man who had burned her house down—but they did not, and together they followed Trent and the former Agnes Surriage out into the muggy afternoon.

  “Are you really her nephew?” she asked, when it became apparent the world would not stop spinning because his hand was at her elbow.

  “Almost certainly, in a manner of speaking. Fifteen families settled Naumkeag. Go far enough back and we are all related.”

  “That does not make every rich old lady north of Boston your aunt.”

  “There are parts of India where any older woman in the village may be addressed as ‘Aunt’ as a sign of respect. An admirable practice we might do well to emulate.”

  “Does Elizabeth call her ‘Aunt’ too?”

  “Elizabeth went home to her family. It was her father who got wind that I’d sold the Cromwell to Admiral Graves.”

  Sarah had given the information about the Cromwell to Angela Ferrers, knowing that Micah Wild would be hurt by it politically and financially. She had not considered that it would hurt Elizabeth Wild and their marriage as well—not fully considered, at least.

  “I am sorry, Micah.”

  “Don’t be. The Pierce family has excellent business sense. If I prosper with the friends of government, Elizabeth and her money will no doubt return. And if I don’t, she’ll divorce me, and I’ll be free to marry some Tory heiress. As you, it seems, are free to be passed from hand to hand around the fleet.”

  It was galling that he still had the power to hurt her, but she would not be baited. “And how exactly do you expect to prosper with no ships, Micah?”

  “Ships have a way of multiplying. I will have the Conant back within the week. She was only leased to Admiral Graves, and the lease has ended. In return for keeping quiet about the extraordinarily familiar gold he paid me for the purchase of the Cromwell, he has given me a letter of marque to recover the Sally.”

  “So now you will be an open brigand,” she said, “rather than a covert one.”

  “Privateering is perfectly legal, and in the case of recovering the Sally, the very purpose for which it was invented. Marque and reprisal. To take back that which is yours. The Sally has been mine since your father defaulted on his loan.”

  “And what, assuming you can find the Sally, will you take her with, Micah? A pair of swivel guns and the power of your voice?”

  “The Conant is no more a toothless merchantman,” said Micah Wild. “Admiral Graves returns her to me much improved, with reinforced decking, six four-pounders, and berths for forty men.”

  Any sea voyage was dangerous. Storms, disease, the navy, and pirates all preyed on New England’s scrappy little merchant vessels. But being hunted by an armed marauder was an entirely different matter. Sarah had grieved after parting with Sparhawk, over the life they would never share in that snug little house. She had hoped in her most secret heart that he might be delayed by poor winds or a contrary tide, have time to rethink his decision, and send for her. Now, though, she prayed he had cleared Salem Harbor and reached the open seas, because if the Conant was armed and hunting her, the Sally could not sail far and fast enough.

  • • •

  The Sally had been refitted since Sparhawk saw her last. Her smart yellow stripe was gone, repainted bright blue. Her broken mast had been replaced, her standing rigging restored, and her gunwales pierced for cannon, though she carried nothing but her two rusted swivels at the moment. She rode a little lower in the water, hidden by the grassy slopes of Noddle’s Island, probably because her deck had been reinforced to withstand the recoil of her as-yet-theoretical guns.

  Sparhawk remarked on these changes to the convalescent Benjamin Ward, who ordered a hammock strung for himself on deck and refused to retire to occupy the captain’s cabin until he was capable of taking command.

  “Admiral Graves is pressing any vessel he can get his hands on,” said Benji. “We must buy guns in Lisbon. Without them, we might as well hand her over to the navy with our compliments.”

  Which begged the question of what they would do if they encountered a naval vessel on the way to Lisbon.

  “Outrun her,” said Benjamin Ward. “We sail in ballast. With no cargo, we can outsail anything big enough to outgun us. You only caught the Sally,” said Benjamin Ward, echoing his sister’s words on that occasion, “because Molineaux was a fool.”

  Sparhawk could not argue with him.

  Sparhawk checked the Sally’s provisions, her salt beef, her water, her peas, her little supply of powder and shot for the swivels, her spare cordage and spars and sails. Most of it was better than what the navy yard provided the king’s ships. Once he was satisfied that their stores were sufficient for the voyage to Lisbon, he left Benji in Mr. Cheap’s capable hands and rowed himself to the Winnisimmet ferry landing for his delayed meeting with the Rebels.

  The admiral, James knew, had been routinely raiding Chelsea and the nearby Noddle’s and Hog islands for provisions for weeks. Now the landing was guarded by a company of militia under an elderly but formidable American, a Captain Sprague, who carried a Brown Bess of French and Indian War vintage and a wicked-looking club of polished maple inlaid with wampum that might easily have belonged to the Indian leader, King Philip, himself. Sprague declared Sparhawk’s pass from the Provincial Congress to be in good order and detailed two sturdy farmers with fowling pieces to conduct him to the meetinghouse.

  He also, as it happened, admired Sparhawk’s velvet coat.

  “Got married in one just like it,” said Sprague.

  Which was probably sometime in the forties, thought Sparhawk. No doubt Red Abed had been quite the dandy.

  The countryside, even to a sailor with an untutored eye for such things, was admirable. Lush marshes filled with game marched alongside well-watered fields, and a cool harbor breeze mitigated the summer heat. Sparhawk’s polite inquiries about the hunting, the fishing, the cattle raised there, and the general situation of the island were met by stony silence from the local militiamen, who did not relish the sudden interest being taken by the world at large, and the navy in particular, in their little paradise.

  The meetinghouse was a simple, antique structure, clapboard, with a massive central chimney. The interior was cool and dark, and it took a moment for Sparhawk’s eyes to adjust. At the end of a long aisle formed by rows of rough-hewn benches, standing in a shaft of sunlight streaming through the pulpit window, stood Angela Ferrers, the Merry Widow. Her costume was at odds with the austere building, an elegant robe à l’anglaise cut from oyster satin and trimmed with wide bobbin lace engageantes.

  “New England houses of worship are known for the thunder of their oratory,” she said, gesturing to indicate the ax-hewn timbers. “Not the splendor of their architecture.”

  The wonder of God’s creation, Sparhawk could not help but observe, was indeed more manifest in this woman’s face and corsage than in the rude chamber. It was a studied effect—like a jewel against a square of plain black cloth.

  “I understood that their preachers were ranked on the l
ength, as much as the thunder, of their sermons. Seeing the furnishings, I would hold the shorter the better.”

  “As a naval man,” said Angela Ferrers, “you must be used to discomfort.”

  “I am used to discomfort with purpose.”

  “And you have no purpose for the Divine.”

  “On the contrary. I make use of his designs every day. Of the stars he has set in the sky and the angles and cosigns of his geometry. I find evidence of his works all around me on the open sea, but I see no sense in looking for him in a place like this. It is more secular evidence, against Admiral Graves, that I hoped to find here today.”

  Angela Ferrers nodded. “We had expected you to meet us here to collect the papers last night. There was, I am credibly informed, some difficulty during your escape. Young Captain Ward has been injured.”

  “Benji was shot by one of Graves’ marines. The ball is out and he is recovering.”

  “Recovering, but not recovered. How soon will he be able to command the Sally?”

  “You would have to speak with his doctor. But then, I believe you already have.”

  “Just so,” admitted Angela Ferrers. “Dr. Warren tells me Benjamin Ward is unlikely to be fit for command for several weeks. A powder run to Lisbon was our condition for handing over the evidence we have gathered. It appears that condition will not be met.”

  He had known nothing would be simple with this woman. “A delay of two weeks hardly signifies,” said Sparhawk. “A storm might add as much or more to the journey.”

  “The army of the United Colonies has powder for twenty cartridges per man. We outnumber General Gage four to one, but if he learned of our situation, and broke out with his four thousand, he might destroy our force in an afternoon. Every day, every hour counts for us now. And you, sir, are more than capable of commanding the Charming Sally.”

  “I am, but the navy frowns upon its officers making powder runs for its enemies. Even those on half pay.”