The Rebel Pirate

by Donna Thorland

  He was not, she now understood, blameless in the death of his wife and the degradation of his son, and youth did not excuse his errors; but men changed and learned from their mistakes, and she believed Trent capable of sacrifice, so she told him. “There is a house in the North End. James bought it for me. The cook there can get Benji a message. He will know how to find this woman.” She gave him the direction of the little green house with its side to the street and the three dormers in the roof, where she had lain with his son.

  “I will go to this house in the North End, and send a message to your brother,” he said, “but first, I will see you in more appropriate accommodation. If I allow them to keep you here, the guard will think you are fair game for abuse. No lady would be held in such conditions.”

  “Not even one who picks pockets?” she asked, trying to keep back the tears that threatened.

  “Not even one who picks them badly,” he said. “Don’t worry, Sarah. All will still be well, and I will call you daughter as gladly as I would have called you wife.”

  It was kind and generous and meant to buoy her spirits, but she did not believe it. Angela Ferrers’ evidence might save Sparhawk. He was innocent. Sarah was not.

  Trent kissed her chastely on the forehead and promised to return within the hour. For good measure he told the guard his rank and title, and made it clear that Sarah was under his protection, and that any insult she suffered would be met with swift retribution.

  The door closed. The corners rustled. The Sally had rats, of course. She and Benji had named the ones too clever for the cat to catch. There had been, over the years, a piratical roster of rodents aboard that schooner: a great beast called Teach, a weedy sly one called Rackham, and a plump mottled titch who had been named Quelch, but who was demoted to Squeaker when the cat finally caught him.

  Trent was as good as his word, and returned, miraculously, within the hour.

  “I have spoken to the military commander of the fort who reports to the governor. He is writing to Tommy for further instructions but agrees that you should stay with the fort major for now.”

  Most likely he had agreed because he did not want to meet Trent at dawn over the matter.

  “Fort major is an honorary post,” Trent continued, “held by a veteran of Louisbourg who lives with his family in an apartment within the walls. And fortunately for us, his pension is miserly, so he is very amenable to bribes. Come.”

  He led her out of the dungeon and up into the yard, trailed by the marine sergeant, who did not like this change of plans but could not gainsay the commander of the castle.

  The fort major’s apartments were located on the second floor in the south wall, and the outside rooms offered a view of Roxbury, with the cupola of the old governor’s mansion visible in the distance.

  The fort major himself, one John Phillips, was avuncular and kind, and had been a chaplain in the army for many years. He no longer preached, but his extensive library of sermons was at Sarah’s disposal. Their establishment was a modest one, as his position was honorary and the stipend accordingly small, but Sarah was invited to share their table and his spinster daughter’s chamber.

  “Once a day we have a boat. It is for the correspondence of the customs inspector and the tea agent, but the boatman’s wife will make any purchases you might need in town. You will make a list straightaway, and I will give it to the boatman, and by tomorrow you will have all the little comforts necessary to life.”

  Trent left her a purse full of gold, and in private, a knife to keep in her pocket and use if anyone attempted to abuse her.

  The fort major’s daughter brought her ink and a pen and paper, and Sarah sat down to make a list for the boatman’s wife, but she could think of nothing that was necessary to life except James Sparhawk.

  • • •

  James passed the night unmolested in a locked compartment on the Preston. The last time he had been confined aboard a man-of-war had been on Slough’s Scylla, and child that he had been, he had still hoped that his father would appear to rescue him.

  Rescue on that occasion had never come. Slough had summoned him, directed him to kneel and open his mouth, and when James had refused, had ordered him tied to the gratings and flogged. Sparhawk had realized then that his father was never coming, and accepted that it was Trent’s actions that had put him there in the first place.

  Now James knew his father was not the villain that he had thought, but that did not mean his father would come for him now. He had seen the devotion on Trent’s face when he looked at Sarah in that shabby little room. In Trent’s place, Sparhawk might be tempted to try to enforce the bargain he had made with Graves—to trade James’ life for Sarah’s. And thinking of her in the cells of the fort, at the mercy of the admiral’s lackeys, Sparhawk wished he would.

  The reverend had come with him all the way to the flagship, and finding the sailors of the Preston a more God-fearing lot than their marines, sent for and received water and bandages and a beaker of rum. He cleaned Sparhawk’s cuts and bruises, examined and wrapped Sparhawk’s ribs, one of which might be cracked and hurt like the devil, and asked him if he would like to pray.

  Sparhawk attempted to explain his notion of the Divine, of stars and angles and cosigns and the map of the heavens, but after the rum and the beating, it came out sounding like a treatise on navigation crossed with the Admiralty Rules and Regulations, and James gave up. The Reverend Edwards proclaimed him a deist and produced a small book of sermons from his pocket that he claimed he kept close to hand for such occasions, which made Sparhawk wonder exactly what manner of “occasions” regularly came up in American colleges.

  Edwards read to him for some time, the words less important than the reassuring sound of the divine’s fluting voice, and it occurred to Sparhawk as he drifted off to sleep that the man had read to him before, though the text when he had been a child, if James recalled correctly, had been Robinson Crusoe.

  Just after noon the next day, a midshipman brought James a meal from the mess, an indication that while the charge against him might be gross theft, someone on board thought it wise to treat him as an officer and a gentleman—of sorts. The rather sheepish young middy apologized for the quality of the meat and described the item on the plate—generously, to Sparhawk’s mind—as a chop.

  “Our servant is not allowed to go to the market,” he explained, “until after the senior officers’ servants, and he cannot get anything good now. It was different before the army made a hash of things at Lexington.”

  It certainly had been.

  Sparhawk thanked him. He did not think Graves above poisoning him, but he was hardly likely to do so with anything so unappetizing as the “chop.”

  Sparhawk ate.

  The afternoon passed.

  The midshipman returned with a tankard of grog and waited until Sparhawk had finished, then lingered a moment more, screwing up his courage. Finally he said, “Ned Ward was a gentleman on the Preston for a week. Then he was transferred to the Diana. Captain Graves says that he deserted like a cowardly Yankee, but I thought he might have run away to join your pirate crew.”

  Sparhawk was unaware that he had a pirate crew. “And why would you think that?” he asked without rancor. He could recall those heady days, just after McKenzie had made him a midshipman, when life seemed like an adventure and the world was filled with wonders: monsters and pirates and corsairs. And the most terrifying creatures of all: girls, of course.

  “Because Ned said that he knew you, and when you were arrested for stealing the admiral’s gold, he said that if you had done it, then you had done it for a good reason, and probably because you were in love with his sister.”

  It was a twelve-year-old’s understanding: wildly romantic, totally wrong, and, at the same time, completely true.

  • • •

  Trent did not come back to the island the next day, or the
day after that. A trunk from the mainland arrived, however, filled with her things, and in the same boat, her maid.

  Trent had overseen the packing himself, the woman told her, though Sarah could have gleaned as much from the neat naval corners into which her garments had been folded and the efficient way they were wedged inside. A good sea chest was stuffed tight like an oyster, her father used to say.

  At the bottom of the trunk was her sewing bag with her embroidery silks and a yard of fresh canvas with a letter rolled inside. It was from Trent, and it warned her that the admiral might bar him from visiting, but assured her that she was never out of his thoughts. It made no mention of Sparhawk. Sarah assumed that everything Trent sent to her would be opened and read, and that he could vouchsafe no confidences in his letters. He closed by reassuring her that he was working tirelessly for her release.

  The fort major’s wife lent her a frame and helped her stretch her canvas in their comfortable parlor, which she confided to Sarah had been much larger and better appointed when her husband had been the castle’s actual commander, but such was the gratitude of princes, or governors, that Major Phillips had been turned out of his post with nothing just after his sixtieth birthday, a time of life when he could not possibly be expected to secure new employment. She hinted that these financial difficulties had contributed in some way to her daughter’s disappointment. Major Phillips had only attained this poor sinecure through the strenuous efforts of her family’s connections.

  Sarah was not allowed to leave the apartment, and the marine posted at the head of the stairs refused her request to take a daily turn in the yard. From the windows Sarah could watch the soldiery drilling, which she did not much enjoy, and betweentimes, children playing, which she did. These, she was told, belonged to a pair of refugee families who had lost their homes to mob violence. But not their fortunes, or so Mrs. Phillips said: the tea agent’s wife was always sending for fine things from the mainland, like lace and almonds and other luxuries.

  “I invited them to dine when they first came to the island, but they did not reciprocate, and we could not bear the expense,” she told Sarah on their third afternoon spent stitching in front of the window. “I am sure it is of little moment to them, the cost of a meal, and they did not even think upon it,” she said. “But the governor might have considered these little social obligations, and made us some allowance for it. I fear it leaves my husband embarrassed that he cannot even ask the gentlemen into his study for a glass of brandy without making some sacrifice. And this leaves him in the unpleasant position of being forced to do errands and accept requests that plague his conscience terribly.”

  He procured company for the tea agent, she confided, and allowed him the use of some rooms set aside for the storage of the fort major’s possessions, to enjoy such company, out of the sight of his wife. “I cannot look her in the face,” said Mrs. Phillips, “knowing what he does with his trollop atop those crates.”

  A little past four, Sarah was summoned by the guard. She followed him across the yard and into a stairwell, then up to a set of second-floor rooms that looked out over the harbor toward the open sea.

  The whitewashed chamber held only one chair, a table, and Francis Graves. His hair was shorter than she remembered, pulled into a stubby tail at the back of his neck, the ends singed. And his eyebrows were missing. Disfigurement was common among sailors, an accepted risk for those who followed the sea and enjoyed its freedoms. Sarah had never been frightened or repulsed by scars or missing limbs, but Francis Graves wore his injuries with neither dignity nor ease.

  He followed the direction of her eyes, reached back to touch the frizzled ends of his hair, and gave her a grim smile. “Courtesy of Captain Sparhawk and his Rebel friends, when they took my brother’s ship, the Diana.”

  He did not offer her a seat, because there was only the one, and he occupied it.

  “I thought the Rebels offered the Diana’s crew quarter.”

  “They did. And they looted her as well. But we would have gotten her afloat, when the tide came in, had they let her be. Not content, though, to humiliate my brother and my uncle and the king’s navy, the rabble had to put her to the torch as well. She was not a year old, purchased and outfitted at great expense.”

  “With gold your uncle stole from the Wasp,” said Sarah, sick of this family and its lies.

  “What gives you the right to question the decisions of an admiral?” demanded Graves. “You are a provincial sailor’s trull, for all that Trent dresses you in silk and lace. My brother will not get another ship on this station. Maybe not ever. He could not look on and watch her burn. It was the grossest criminal act, and we will see every man who was there that night hanged as pirates.”

  “Then you will have to hang every adult male in Chelsea,” she said. And Salem, and Marblehead, when it happens there, she added in the privacy of her mind.

  “The Preston’s yardarm will accommodate them. I have already sworn a statement that you did knowingly and willfully resist a lawful boarding and customs search by the king’s navy, ordered the assault of myself and the marines under my command, and took prisoner and held hostage an officer of the king. There is further testimony from your countryman Micah Wild, whose loyalty to the government and material aid to the navy have earned the gratitude of the Admiralty, that you did hold James Sparhawk in your home in Salem against his will, and made statements admitting to this in Mr. Wild’s hearing. There is also the matter of four bodies found in the wreckage of your house after the fire that consumed it.”

  “Is the Admiralty in the habit of hearing testimony from a woman’s former lovers?” she asked. “Because Micah Wild is not a disinterested party in my affairs.”

  “No indeed. Wild further asserts that you did deprive him of his rightful property, a schooner called the Sally, which had become his upon the failure of your father to fulfill his obligation on a debt.”

  “I see,” said Sarah. “And the Admiralty will conveniently look the other way in the matter of Mr. Wild’s investment in the Sally, which was carrying the French gold.”

  “The Sally’s log will hardly vindicate you, Miss Ward. It lists many investors, but only one owner—your father. You are no more than a pirate, from a family of pirates. Your father should have swung thirty years ago.”

  “Then why are we not already hanging from the Preston’s yardarm?” she asked, with more bravado than she felt.

  “Because my uncle is a sentimental man. Your lover and your betrothed have deserted you. Sparhawk has been pardoned. He is the heir, I am given to understand, to a barony and a substantial fortune, and he and his long-lost father prepare even now to return home. It is a story worthy of Mr. Smollett, if only he were alive to tell it. Sparhawk is young, rich, handsome. He will be the talk of London. You, on the other hand, will hang, along with Red Abed, and when we find him, that little deserter, your brother Ned.”

  “I do not believe that James would abandon me,” she said.

  “Let us face facts. You are a buccaneer’s daughter, Miss Ward. No man with such glittering prospects would ally himself with such as you.”

  “Trent planned to,” she said.

  “If you believe that, you are naive indeed. Every officer above the rank of lieutenant in this godforsaken town has a mistress he calls a fiancée because there is no other worthwhile entertainment to be had. And half these imbecilic women think they are truly betrothed. There was no formal engagement. No bans were read. Lord Polkerris has no obligation to you. Certainly, none he acknowledges now. He has not even troubled to visit.”

  Lieutenant Graves tried on a sympathetic look. It did not suit his face. “We are offering you the opportunity to save your father and your younger brother from the noose. Confess that you and James Sparhawk conspired to send a chest full of flint to Boston aboard the Wasp, and that you stole the French gold off the Sally for your own purposes and buried it on Cape A
nn. Write it,” he said, pushing a pen and ink across the table, “and sign it, and your father and Ned will go free.”

  • • •

  Sparhawk was shackled and taken to the admiral’s cabin under guard. He supposed after the mayhem at the Three Cranes it was to be expected, but with the beating the marines had given him, it was unlikely he could have attempted to escape again.

  He had been belowdecks with only occasional lantern light for so many days that his eyes did not adjust at once to the brightness of the admiral’s cabin. The admiral himself was not present in the stark white room with its long row of windows. At the table where the admiral had eaten his joint of beef and left untouched his bowl of fresh green peas sat his nephew Thomas Graves, lately the commander of the Diana, whom Sparhawk had watched madly attempt to climb back aboard the burning schooner after the Rebels had set it alight; and his younger brother, Francis, Sparhawk’s onetime lieutenant, who had dragged Thomas from the flames.

  Francis had escaped with singed hair and burnt hands. Thomas had not been so lucky. His right ear and cheek were bandaged, the flesh showing livid and oozing at the edges of the muslin. One arm was in a sling, the hand completely swaddled.

  They did not offer him a chair.

  “Your slut has double-crossed you,” said Francis Graves. “In exchange for a pardon, she has written a confession naming you as the instigator of the plot.” He pushed paper and ink across the table. “I won’t pretend to like you, Captain, but this is too much. I can’t believe it of a brother officer, not even you. Describe how she tricked you into sending the flint to Boston aboard the Wasp, and bragged of it while her family held you prisoner in Salem, and she will hang, and we will see you free.”

  He had met Sarah under the most extreme duress, seen her face down the British Navy with nothing but a pistol in her hand, defy Micah Wild and the Rebel mob because her sense of honor demanded it, and risk hanging to reunite him with his father. And even if his father was not the saint Sarah had believed, Trent’s failings, tragic as their results had been, were human and forgivable.