The Rebel Pirate

by Donna Thorland

  The scene they found at the mouth of the sandy creek north of Noddle’s Island beggared imagination. The Americans, some six hundred of them, were massed on Chelsea beach, near the ferry landing. They had two fieldpieces with them, and were firing upon the Diana.

  She did not return the American volleys with her sixteen guns. She did nothing at all, because she was stuck fast in the mud, her draft too deep for the shallow creek, the angle of her deck too steep for her guns to be of any use. The tide was ebbing more with each passing minute. She had six boats out in the shallows, their crews rowing furiously to pull her off, but the Americans were peppering the British sailors with small-arms fire and they could make no headway. The Diana was Gulliver caught fast by the Lilliputians.

  Every once in a while a ball hurtled out of the darkness from the hill on Noddle’s, where a handful of British marines had set up two of their own fieldpieces, but the Americans were undaunted.

  Sparhawk scanned the Diana’s deck for some sign of Ned, but there was not a head to be seen above the schooner’s tilted rail, and when so much as a pennant moved in the breeze, an American discharged his rifle with astonishing accuracy.

  Under heavy fire, one by one the boat crews, trying to pull the Diana off, cut their lines, and once freed, shot toward the safety of the British guns on Noddle’s Island. Sparhawk could not blame them.

  The last two boats became caught in a race to hack themselves free, their crews knowing the final vessel tethered to the Diana, heeling hard as the schooner was, would be lashed by the recoil of the rope.

  The second-to-last boat got free. The sailors in the final shallop took turns sawing at the rope while the others crouched low to escape the fire of the Americans. Finally, with a loud snap, the cable broke. The rope whipped wildly through the air. The little boat capsized, and her sailors stood up in waist-deep water and splashed desperately toward the shore.

  A voice Sparhawk recognized as belonging to Thomas Graves, older brother to Francis, excoriated the fleeing sailors in the strongest terms, but the effect was somewhat spoiled when he raised his head above the rail and had his hat shot off. It fell into the mud with a splash and stayed there.

  A few minutes later, the Diana followed its example. For one hopeful moment the outgoing tide lifted her up over the sandbar that had snared her. Then she settled and rolled with unexpected grace onto her side, beached like a whale.

  The Americans on shore were silent at first, the spectacle of a British naval vessel helpless and impotent almost impossible to believe. There was something indecent about the sight of her keel above water, like a forbidden glimpse of a woman’s knees, and the men lining the beach were uncertain how to react.

  Until one fellow let out a whooping Indian war cry and the others took this up, Mohawks all now that the Diana could not level her guns at them. Then the most uncouth American Sparhawk had ever seen, gray, round, and wearing a coat even older than Abednego’s, waded up to the stranded schooner and offered the captain of the Diana and his crew quarter in a bellowing voice.

  Graves refused to surrender.

  A cannonball hurtled out of the night from Noddle’s Island and passed between the gruff American’s legs.

  “That would be Old Put,” supplied Mr. Cheap.

  Old Put—Israel Putnam—ignored the ball and laid out his terms. The British could abandon the Diana, or the Americans would burn her, and every man in her, including Sarah Ward’s little brother Ned, to the waterline.

  • • •

  Sarah woke with a start in the predawn hours to the sound of thunder. She listened for rain but heard none. The rest of her sleep was fitful, disturbed by traffic in the street below and voices—the soldiery drilling far too early—on the Common.

  She tried to return to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes and allowed her mind to drift, it returned to Trent and his hands on her body in that small chamber. At the borders of sleep, her body replayed its response to his skilled, calculating touch. Then she would come awake with a start, awash in a sea of guilt.

  Because she loved Sparhawk.

  She had lived under Trent’s roof and accepted Trent’s protection, knowing that a physical relationship—congress—could and now would be the inevitable result. But she had always shied away from imagining it. There had been so many excuses: her ill-fated encounter with Wild, her abandoned promise from Sparhawk, Trent’s own delicacy where such matters were concerned following his candor the night they met.

  Somehow she had thought that once they married they would be able to become lovers with a safe distance between them, one that preserved her tenderness for Sparhawk, whom she now knew to be his son, without cheating Trent of her whole affection.

  Now she understood that it would be impossible to be the focus of Trent’s singular passion and remain unmoved; that she had always, even from the start, been drawn to him. Their age difference, smaller than that between many couples, particularly when one partner was widowed, had never concerned her. This was in part because of his youthfulness and vigor and in part because her own father was so much older than Trent, having been nearly fifty when she was born. She did not see Trent as belonging to her father’s generation.

  If Sparhawk had meant nothing to her, she might have married Trent with no impediment. It was not that she and James had gone to bed together. It was the unalterable fact that Sparhawk was the man she wanted to share her troubles and joys with, whom she wanted to amuse with the eccentricities of Lady Frankland and turn to for comfort when she worried about Ned.

  She could not marry Trent.

  When she finally gave up on sleep and dressed and went down early to breakfast, she found Trent drinking his coffee and writing letters while his servant stood by.

  “This to the admiral,” said Trent, handing off a sealed letter. “And this to the general at Province House. And this, by whatever means you can contrive, to Israel Putnam with the Rebel army at Cambridge.”

  “What has happened?” she asked.

  “The Diana is taken, burned to the waterline. The Americans say they killed three hundred British last night, the navy says it lost no one, but the crew of the Diana is not to be found.”

  Sarah sat down heavily in one of the dining room chairs. Trent knelt in front of her. “Do not think it. There is no reason to believe Ned was among those, if any, killed. The Rebel numbers smack of exaggeration; the Diana’s whole complement was barely sixty men. I will find him for you, and Graves or no, I will bring him back to you.”

  She nodded dumbly. “Don’t tell my father,” she said. “Not yet. Not until you have to.”

  “I have already instructed the servants to bring no newspapers to Abednego. His brushes and paints usually consume him of a morning. By midday, I hope to be back, with news.”

  He left. She remained seated in the chair. The servants brought coffee and laid dishes on the table and left her, no doubt on Trent’s instructions, to herself. It was only when she felt a tug on her sleeve that she realized she had been there for too long.

  She looked up into the scrubbed face of the cook’s child from Sparhawk’s house—her house—in the North End.

  “He has a message for you,” said the child.

  She knew who he was.

  “He said to tell you that Ned is safe. And that he wants to see you. He asks if you will meet him at the house.”

  He had told her he loved her, and she believed him. She understood love, not because she had shared it with Micah Wild, but because she had a family that loved and infuriated her in equal measure. After twenty-seven years in a loving, maddening family of roguish mariners, she could predict Sparhawk’s next move.

  And because she loved him in return, she wrote not one reply, but two. The first she addressed to Mr. Cheap, and filled with precise instructions. She closed it with her father’s seal. The second she wrote to Sparhawk, appointing a time
to meet, and this one she closed with Trent’s seal.

  • • •

  Sparhawk was used to giving orders, not debating them. The Ward family, unfortunately, did things differently. At least in their little democracy everyone cast an equal vote, and Ned was now his devoted ally.

  Sarah’s younger brother had boarded the Sally and run straight to Benjamin Ward with the tale of how Sparhawk had rescued him from the beached Diana.

  “The Rebels were going to burn her to the waterline,” said Ned to his older brother, who lay in a hammock, favoring his wound.

  “They were only threatening to burn her,” said Sparhawk. “They wanted the stores off her, the powder and cannon and swivels. They would not put her to the torch so long as there was a hope of plundering her.”

  “Quite right,” said Benji.

  “They did burn her,” said Ned, who wanted to tell his tale. “Later. But Captain Sparhawk got us off first. Well, Dr. Warren got us off, but it was Sparhawk’s idea. The doctor waded up to the Diana—not so far as Old Put, who just stood there while the cannonballs whistled through his legs—but close enough for all that. He said that he knew the Diana was holding pressed men, Americans, and that the Rebels would stop their fire if any of us wanted to come off. Two men jumped. Then Captain Graves said there were no more Americans on board, only Englishmen. Then Captain Sparhawk whispered in Dr. Warren’s ear and Dr. Warren began calling out names, saying they had a list of pressed men on the Diana. It was no one’s name that I knew, but one of the tars, who was an Irishman and no American of any kind, leapt up and answered to Ezekiah Martin of Malden, and another from Glasgow to Giles Fitch of Boston. I did not know what they were about, but the Irishman took me by the collar and told me that it was better to be a live American than a dead British sailor. Half the crew deserted. Captain Graves did not have the men to defend her after that. His boats came back and took him and the rest of the crew away under the cover of the guns on Noddle’s. And then I found Mr. Cheap and Captain Sparhawk. And we got the Diana’s cannon.”

  At this Benjamin Ward sat up. “How many?” he asked.

  “Not all of them,” said Sparhawk. “I agreed to help Old Put bring the guns and their carriages off in one piece if he would give me two swivels and six four-pounders for the Sally. It seemed a wise precaution, given Micah Wild’s designs.”

  “If we have guns,” said Benji, “there are nearer and more profitable sources of powder than Lisbon.”

  There might very well be. The whole harbor knew that three supply ships had set sail from Portsmouth at the same time as the Cerberus. They had become separated during the crossing and were now overdue.

  “The Diana,” said Mr. Cheap sensibly, “was a fluke. It’s not likely another ship will oblige you by grounding herself in a creek.”

  “Not,” said Benjamin Ward, “without help.”

  “You are forgetting the more immediate problem of your sister,” said Sparhawk. “She is living under the roof of a murderer.”

  Benji and Mr. Cheap exchanged looks.

  “Captain Trent?” asked Ned. “He’s not a bad fellow. He bought me a sextant.”

  He had bought Sparhawk a sextant too. It had been smashed to pieces the night the men came for his mother.

  “I do not doubt your word,” said Benji. “Perhaps the man was once a monster. But he is not now. He has been good to Sarah, and Ansbach also says he is a fine fellow.”

  Sparhawk knew he was not.

  “And you cannot make my sister do a thing against her will. I have twenty-seven years of experience in the matter and know it cannot be done.”

  “There are other, confounding factors that would make a marriage between them an abomination,” said Sparhawk.

  Ned’s brow furrowed. Mr. Cheap looked away. And Benji said, “When I am up to it, remind me to call you out and kill you.”

  • • •

  Trent returned in the late afternoon. He looked tired, and Sarah did not doubt that he had called upon every ounce of interest he possessed to discover news of Ned.

  He took the parlor chair opposite her. “There is reason to hope,” he said. “The Rebels offered the pressed Americans on the Diana their freedom. That is why the admiral is claiming no casualties. He does not want it known that half the crew of his nephew’s ship, which had no Americans besides your brother, deserted him. As best I can tell, only Thomas Graves was seriously injured in the affair. Burned quite badly, I’m told. He tried to get back aboard her after she was set afire, devil knows why. I will cross to Cambridge myself in the morning and try to find Ned among the Americans.”

  “There is no need. I’ve had word. Ned is safe.”

  Trent looked equal parts relieved and concerned. “How do you know this?”

  “I received a message this afternoon.”

  “Thank God. Where is he?”

  “With Sparhawk,” she said.

  Trent’s expression darkened. “Sarah, Ned cannot remain with Sparhawk. This man is a fugitive. He presumed upon your obligation to him and embroiled you in his escape. With Ned in his power, he can prevail upon you again. You are already a hairbreadth from the gallows. Further association with this man could hang you.”

  “He will not prevail upon me again. He is in love with me. And he is your son.”

  Trent became perfectly still. The clock in the hall chimed. A carriage passed in the street. The silence in the room stretched. Finally, he leaned forward and said in a low, deadly voice, “Who told you this?”

  Her mouth felt dry. She had not been afraid to broach the topic, but she was afraid now. “Sparhawk did,” she said, summoning her voice and her courage. “He says he was born on Nevis, to your first wife, and he believes you have done him a terrible wrong.”

  Trent considered, then sat back and smiled. “He is an imposter. My son is dead.”

  His certainty was chilling. Sparhawk had warned her that Trent would kill to protect his secret. She had not taken the threat seriously until now; she found that she was too frightened to press his claims of murder and imprisonment. “There is a resemblance,” she said.

  “No doubt. Most, though certainly not all, of the imposters who have attempted to blackmail me have held claim to a passing resemblance, but dark hair is not so very uncommon, and it is no secret that I searched for two years for the child of my first marriage, who I believed, wrongly, had died on Nevis. What is less well-known is that I found him.”

  Her stomach churned. “Where?” she asked.

  “Buried. At Portsmouth.”

  It did not directly contradict Sparhawk’s story. “As he tells it, that is the grave of the real James Sparhawk, the midshipman whose identity your son took.”

  Trent smiled again, but it was a cold expression, with no light in his eyes. “That is a very clever twist on an old refrain. I give the boy credit. But I can assure you, Sarah, that he is not my son, and any congress you have had with him will be no impediment to our marriage.”

  “But the fact that I love him will be.”

  A muscle in Trent’s jaw twitched. “This man is a known rake and seducer, Sarah. He has deceived you.”

  “He says much the same about you.”

  “No doubt he would. The tricks men play on gullible women, the tricks I once played, have changed little over the years. You are young and have led a sheltered life in a small port—”

  “Until Wild jilted me, and the navy tried to press my brother, and the mob burned my house down. I am not a child, and I have not been gullible for a long time. I cannot marry you, Anthony, because even if you are right and I am wrong, I believe Sparhawk is your son, and he has been my lover.”

  “What,” said Trent, “must I do to prove to you this man is a liar?”

  If she was right she could restore Sparhawk to his father, heal wounds that went deeper than the scars on his back, and enl
ist a powerful ally to fight with them against Admiral Graves. “This parson who is to marry us, do you trust him?” she asked.

  Trent considered. “For many years after my wife died, I paid Reverend Edwards the rent from the living at Polkerris. He stopped accepting it around the time of the business with the tea, out of conscience. He is honest to a fault. I do trust him.”

  “And do you believe he would recognize your son?”

  “Tristan is dead,” said Trent. She had never heard his name before, thought it might have suited the boy she imagined James Sparhawk had once been, but found it hard to reconcile with the man.

  “But if the Reverend Edwards declared James Sparhawk your son, then you would accept him as well?”

  The muscle in Trent’s jaw twitched again. “Yes.”

  If she was wrong, she was placing herself in the power of a murderer. She had to take the risk. “Then you must meet with him,” she said. “You must do it, for me.”

  The muscle in Trent’s jaw twitched again. His answer was long in coming. But at last, he replied simply, “Yes.”

  • • •

  Sparhawk pondered his choices. He had spent years assembling the evidence of his identity, planning his revenge against Trent. He might, even now, if he took the Sally to Lisbon for Angela Ferrers, be able to clear his name with the Admiralty and pursue his long-held goal.

  If he left Sarah to Trent’s mercy.

  He could not do it. He had to get her away from the bastard and take the surest route to keeping her safe: killing Trent. He now knew he could not call upon the Wards for help spiriting her off. If he brought Sarah Ward aboard the Sally, Mr. Cheap and Benji would simply release her again. Not even Ned had been willing to join in his plan.