The Rebel Pirate

by Donna Thorland

  She put her faith in people, loving loyally and steadfastly.

  He had not. Lashed to the gratings of the Scylla, with the blood running down his back, James had lost faith in his father, and never dared believe in anyone else like that again. If he had held on to hope a little longer, if his faith had survived until his meeting with Mungo McKenzie, if he had implored that good man to take him home, he might have known his father’s love these past fifteen years.

  “No.”

  Thomas Graves struck the table with his good hand. “Do you want to hang, man?”

  “Not particularly,” said James Sparhawk. “But I know Sarah Ward, and you manifestly do not. You’re bluffing.”

  They returned him to his cabin. The next day he received a visit from Charles Ansbach, who brought with him a bottle of brandy and sent the middy for two glasses.

  “They will not admit Trent,” he said, pulling up a stool and sitting opposite Sparhawk, “but they dare not bar me, so I am here as his emissary. Though I am not sure what to call you,” said the king’s bastard nephew. “Is it Trent or is it Sparhawk?”

  “I am not quite sure myself,” said James honestly.

  “Well, Sparhawk or Trent, you will be free by the end of the day.”

  “How?”

  “Your father’s efforts. Bribes and blackmail, I daresay.”

  “And Sarah?”

  “She as well.”

  He had been right. “Where is she now?” asked Sparhawk.

  “Miss Ward is at the castle, with the fort major, in his apartments. Safe. The admiral and the governor have been at odds over who has authority over her, but their disagreement has spared her imprisonment in the cells beneath the walls, and your father’s money has ensured her every comfort.”

  Ansbach handed him a beaker of brandy. Sparhawk took it, his hands shaking with relief. He knew she would not have confessed of her own free will, but he had worried, in the dark watches of the night, that they might have coerced her—tortured her—and he had vowed that he would kill Thomas and Francis Graves if they had. He confessed to Ansbach the fear that had been eating him.

  “They dared not touch her,” said Ansbach, reaching into the dispatch case he had brought and pulling forth a printed broadside. “General Gage has arrested the printer’s son, Peter Edes, and thrown him in Boston Jail, but not before the boy managed to print and distribute several thousand of these.”

  The image had been struck off an engraving, a political cartoon like those so beloved of the London broadsheets, and if the work showed a certain haste, this only added to its vigor. The central figure was a female form in heroic pose, young, pretty, slender but shapely, her hair streaming down her back. She stood on the deck of a trim schooner, holding off a party of lecherous marines with nothing but a pistol. One arm was thrown back to protect maybe her son—or conceivably, her younger brother—who peeked, eyes wide with fright, around her skirts; the other aimed the gun steadily at a drooling sergeant whose eyes were fixed on her ample bosom.

  “The artist has taken some license,” said Sparhawk.

  “It is Tommy Gage’s worst nightmare,” replied Ansbach. “A British abuse tailor-made for the talents of Samuel Adams’ pen and Paul Revere’s burin. Another Boston Massacre, another Concord, another rallying cry for the Rebels if they hang her here. For all his other faults, Gage is too smart to allow it. The admiral must swallow his pride and free her, though he blusters even now that she committed piracy on the high seas.”

  “It was Marblehead,” said Sparhawk. “The seas were not so high as all that. And resisting the press is a time-honored tradition. If we began prosecuting women for it, we’d have to hang every fishwife in Bristol.”

  “No doubt that will be Parliament’s next act,” said Ansbach. “Or some similar folly. I have written to my uncle, the king, about the state of affairs in Boston Harbor. I tried to persuade your father to share some of the evidence against Admiral Graves in the matter of the gold with me, but he fears that any reprisals from that revenge-minded family would be directed against you. In any case, I have done my best to see the admiral recalled. The pamphlet is proof enough that his temperament is ill-suited to such a delicate post. Uncle George does not make war on women defending their children.”

  “And what of your own interest in this affair?” asked Sparhawk. They both knew he meant Benjamin Ward.

  “Ah,” replied Ansbach with a sigh. “You will not have heard. There is a Rebel privateer patrolling Boston Harbor this past week, and she has taken her first prize. Galling for the admiral, and a windfall for the American forces. The Nancy out of Portsmouth was carrying a hold full of the finest Swiss powder. She was three weeks overdue, her topsails gone in an Atlantic storm, two hands at the pumps at all hours. She had a sensible skipper, and that was her undoing. He followed the navy’s published remarks on navigation in Boston Harbor, and anchored at Boston Light to wait for a local pilot to guide her in.”

  Sparhawk thought he could guess what had happened next.

  “Their pilot, alas, was waylaid, and the man who came aboard was an imposter. A notorious buccaneer named Cheap. He was Abednego Ward’s sailing master at one time. Now he sails with his son.”

  “Cheap did not, I take it,” said Sparhawk, “guide the Nancy to the Long Wharf.”

  “No. He took her up one of the little high-tide creeks, where a schooner named the Sally was waiting for her. To do these Rebel pirates credit, they did not molest or rob the British crew. They put them off in the ship’s boat and allowed them to remove their personal possessions. But they took all of the powder, and they burned the leaky little brig to the waterline.”

  Benjamin Ward had told Sparhawk: he would always put kin and crew before king and country. And evidently, before his own passions as well. Angela Ferrers had demanded a powder run in exchange for the evidence against Admiral Graves, and as Benji had observed, there were nearer sources of powder than Lisbon. He could not count on Trent being able to bribe the Americans to save his sister, and so he had taken it upon himself to acquire a bargaining chip. And in so doing, he had perhaps driven a permanent wedge between himself and Charles Ansbach.

  “What will you do now?” asked Sparhawk.

  “The Graves family—the admiral and all four of his nephews—has vowed to hunt this Rebel pirate down and hang him, but I am determined to find him first.”

  To find him first. And no doubt keep him from harm if he could.

  A few hours after Ansbach left, one of the Preston’s marines came for Sparhawk and led him to the gangplank without explanation or fanfare. From the top of that ramp James could survey the entire length of the Long Wharf, thrusting almost a mile into the harbor, lined with squat bulky warehouses. Once, ships had lined up along that mighty jetty end to end, an unbroken line of masts and rigging, promising to the sailors who came to Boston to make their fortunes the limitless freedom of the sea.

  A few small shops struggled on: caulkers and carpenters employed by the fleet, merchants who were granted precious dispensations to sell the most basic sustenance, rice and flour and oats. There was a barrel maker open for business opposite the Preston, his awnings rolled out against the summer sun and his products on proud, if somewhat scanty, display.

  His father stood beside a rack of barrels, waiting.

  This time, he had come for him.

  The day was hot, the air humid, and that was why Sparhawk could not draw breath. The caulkers were busy at their work, their pitch boiling noxious vapors into the air, and that was why his eyes were watering.

  “You are free,” said Anthony Trent.

  “And Sarah?” James asked with what voice he could find.

  Trent nodded reassuringly. “Expected from the castle hourly. Come, let us go home.”

  Sparhawk climbed into the carriage, glad of the shadows inside where he could hide the emotion that th
reatened to overcome him.

  “How?”

  “Nothing less than blackmail. I procured the receipts for the Diana and the admiral’s other purchases from a certain widow of the Rebel persuasion. A formidable and intriguing woman. The documents are damning, as they specify the coin in which the sums were paid. Graves has been given copies of these documents. If you and Sarah were not released, I promised to send the originals to the Admiralty.”

  “And what did you give the Rebels in return?” Sparhawk asked.

  “Information,” replied his father, “the source of which, I fear, will become obvious within a very short time. Specifically, Billy Howe’s plans for an attack on the Rebel positions at Roxbury. He is poised to make Gentleman Johnny’s ‘elbow room.’

  “Billy shared his plans with Clinton, Gage, Burgoyne, the admiral, and me. When it is clear that their attack has been anticipated, I will become a man without a country or a livelihood, which is as much as I deserve. But it is my hope that both will be restored to you through my actions, and to Sarah as well.”

  Sparhawk had just gotten his father back. He was not prepared to lose him again. “You won’t just stay here and let them arrest you,” he said.

  “No,” said Trent. “After I have seen you and Sarah both free, I will leave with the Reverend Edwards for Cambridge. He has invited me to live with his family in their house near the college until such time as the troubles are settled or I make other arrangements.”

  “It is not so very difficult, I understand,” Sparhawk said, thinking of Joseph Warren’s midnight visits, “to slip across the lines. I could come to see you.”

  “I would like that. I cannot give you back your mother, or your childhood, or the years that we have lost, but I would give you a future with a woman who is worthy of the man you have become, and try to earn myself a place in it. That is, if you intend to marry Sarah.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “That is well,” said Trent. “I almost feared, when I saw her house in the North End, that the resemblance you bear to my youthful self might not be too pronounced.”

  “I did not offer Sarah marriage because I did not know what would happen when I stepped forward and declared myself your son. If you had been the murderer I thought,” he said, hearing the defensiveness in his voice and trying to curb it, “then you might have been a danger to her.” Sparhawk was explaining himself as though an errant child, and this man his father.

  Which he was.

  “I’m not even sure it would have been legal to marry her under the name James Sparhawk,” he added.

  “I suggest you decide on that point quickly, as I have asked the Reverend Edwards to meet us at the house. He is not terribly fastidious in the matter of licenses, fortunately. You will have to beg Abednego’s permission, of course, and I must warn you in advance that you may find it a gruesome business.”

  Strange to think his father too had sought such permission.

  “Did he offer you rum?” asked Sparhawk, remembering the sulfurous black liquor he had drunk in Abednego Ward’s keeping room in Salem.

  “No,” said James’ father.

  “Then I think it will be just fine.”

  Sparhawk had never seen the spacious home Trent rented on the Common, but it equaled the size and luxury of the house Micah Wild had built for Sarah in Salem, and far exceeded it in opulence. It was a fit place for a wedding, but afterward, he wanted to take her to the snug little house in the North End, or better, to the Sally, where he would ask for her ration of grog, and convince her to walk across the deck for him in nothing but her chemise and stays.

  Abednego Ward greeted Sparhawk in the hall and shook his hand, congratulating him on his escape from the gallows.

  “He was not as near the rope as all that,” chided Trent, who had cause to know how very near he had come, and the cost to set him free.

  “It is a fine thing,” said Abednego Ward, “a fine thing, to have a brush with the Almighty. It can change a man’s direction entirely.”

  Sparhawk agreed that it could, although he thought he might always have been sailing in the direction of Sarah Ward.

  The Reverend Edwards arrived and punch was served, but Sparhawk did not want to drink until Sarah was with them. He sat near the window in the parlor, waiting for the sound of her carriage, and discovered there an embroidery frame with Trent’s coat of arms—no, his coat of arms—drawn in pencil and an outline begun in gold-wire thread. He traced its outline, the lines of the familiar griffin and brace of Cornish chough, and recalled the embellished curtains on the Sally, how she had confided to him in that antique bed in the North End her desire to sail with him to share the freedom—and discomforts—of the sea as Abigail had with Abednego.

  “And there will be no dame schools for my daughters,” she had vowed. But the delicate needlework, the ribbon tucked into the copy of The Female American or the Adventures of Unca Eliza Whitfield that sat snug between the sofa cushions, betrayed the pleasure she had discovered in these female accomplishments. The dame had broadened her mind, at least in some respects. Once he had a ship again, Sparhawk would broaden her horizons. And the children they created would have both the wonders of education and the freedom of the sea.

  The sun dipped in the sky. The warmth of the day dissipated. And still, her carriage did not come.

  Trent sent to the wharf for word of the boat he had hired. It had not yet returned from the island.

  “Perhaps,” suggested the reverend, “she was taken unawares by the good news and required time to pack.”

  Sparhawk did not believe it. He had never known Sarah Ward impractical, or vain of possessions.

  “Send direct to the castle,” said Sparhawk.

  Trent agreed. An hour passed, and a dark certainty overtook Sparhawk. “Graves has double-crossed us. We should go to the castle ourselves.”

  “No,” said Trent. “If the admiral is refusing to free her as agreed, we will not be able to effect her release on our own authority. I will go to Province House and speak to Tommy Gage, and if need be, row him to the castle myself to demand her return. But you should wait here, in the event that she or some news of her makes its way here.”

  Sparhawk knew that his father was right; he could not help Sarah by storming the castle like a knight of old. So he sat in the pretty parlor where she had begun to embroider his family’s coat of arms in gold-wire thread and waited for Sarah Ward, her father sitting quiet and subdued, his earlier ebullience gone, on the settee opposite.

  The shadows in the room lengthened, the sun set, the servants came to light the tapers, and finally Anthony Trent returned.

  “I have been to the castle and back in the company of Thomas Gage. The admiral claims that he sent orders for her release, and the commander at the castle admits to receiving such orders and transmitting them to the guard at the gate. The guard says that she was taken ill and carried to a boat, and he was told that she was in the care of a family friend. The fort major is not to be found, but his wife tells the same story. Sarah’s maid was out walking when all this transpired, and saw nothing. In the end we searched the fort, the outbuildings, and the beaches, and found no trace of her. Sarah Ward is gone.”

  Twenty-two

  The Phillips family was unfailing in its kindness. The guard would not permit Sarah to leave the apartments to see the natural beauty that Major Phillips swore was to be found on the island, so they brought that beauty to her. Mrs. Phillips picked wildflowers and refreshed the bowl in Sarah’s room each day. Her wan, distracted daughter, Rebecca, dried and pressed the discarded blooms, and labeled them in a book in a neat flowing hand.

  When Rebecca was searching for pencils one day, Sarah saw an abandoned project lying hidden at the bottom of a drawer: a compass rose made completely out of dried flowers, the points picked out in rich violet and the rings in bold, verdant green. There were three poi
nts yet to be completed, and it had clearly been made as a gift, with part of the recipient’s name, Martin, visible in the corner, but when Sarah questioned her about it, Rebecca just smiled her sad, distracted smile and closed the drawer.

  Looking out the windows seaward during the long afternoons when Mrs. Phillips and Rebecca walked the beach, Sarah was reminded of her first weeks at the dame school, when she felt imprisoned in the dame’s rambling waterfront house, the sea sparkling within reach but forbidden. She had come to enjoy school, in the end, and cherish Elizabeth Pierce’s friendship, now lost to her, but she had always felt the shackles of the dame’s expectations, and when she became engaged, had thought that Micah Wild would set her free.

  While Major Phillips’ wife and daughter were out during the afternoons, he often invited her into his little study and encouraged her to borrow any books she might like—he had a prodigious library, as many as twoscore volumes—and discuss anything she might have read recently. He did not have any novels, but he had several histories, and these she enjoyed. He also had many trays of dried and pinned insects, which she did not.

  He was not in the habit of offering her any refreshment during these interludes, and he always seemed vaguely embarrassed, like his wife, by the poorness of his hospitality, but today he surprised Sarah by placing a decanter of brandy on the table between them. She was even more surprised when he rummaged in his secretary and produced two cut glasses.

  “My dear,” said Major Phillips, pouring the brandy, “today your ordeal is at an end. You are to be released.”

  Her hand trembled. She was not going to hang. She brought her shaking glass to her lips and drank it off to steady herself. Phillips patted her hand.

  Then panic overtook her. “And James Sparhawk? Is he to be freed as well?”