“I still mean to claim the Sally,” said Micah Wild. “She is my lawful property, and the courts will return her to me. But the admiral betrayed me. He reneged on his promise to release the Roger Conant at the end of her lease, told me he had the right to press her into service, without payment, a necessity of war.”
“How did you get her back?”
“I took her,” he said.
From Admiral Graves, a man who brooked no insult, who would have hanged Sparhawk to conceal his own cupidity, who had ordered Sarah thrown into a dank cell, who threatened children like Ned, and who would have shelled Marblehead over a box of candles. There would be no changing sides again for Micah Wild. “Why?” she asked. “When you could not be sure the Rebels would have you back?”
“Because the admiral’s ‘necessity’ was you. He intended to double-cross Trent and transport you for trial. I couldn’t let him do it. It was always an abstract set of principles for me, liberty, the cause. I did not like anything that Parliament was doing, but that was because it hindered trade. I was always prepared to sail whichever way the favorable wind blew, for independence or reconciliation, but Graves . . . Graves was going to send you across the ocean and hang you,” said Wild. “It was no longer about tea or pamphlets or taxes.”
Sarah had dreamed of this, in her cold bedroom in her vanished house, after the curtains and carpets had been sold. And she had dreamed of it on the chilliest nights, when she slept down on the trundle with Ned and there was no other way to stay warm.
But Micah Wild was only saying it now that Elizabeth and her money were no longer available to him, and Sarah Ward was once more useful to him, a safe conduct to enter Salem Harbor.
“I should have married you, Sarah,” he said. “I was going to. But then you came to me, and I knew I didn’t have to.”
When Sarah said nothing, he went on. “I thought I could have Elizabeth’s money and you and no one would think the worse of me for it. On the contrary, they would envy me. But when I thought you were going to die, that the admiral would see you hanged, I realized that the only thing that mattered to me was you.”
And a heavy chest of French gold.
“If my happiness matters to you,” she said, “you will let me go.”
“Your safety,” said Micah Wild, in the voice that had long since ceased to sway her, “is more important than your momentary happiness. And there is no safety for you inside the British lines while Admiral Graves has control of the squadron. Whatever trick Trent used to free you will not work again. Nor would the admiral bother with the niceties of the law this time. If you go back to Boston and your lover, you will die.”
• • •
The question was how to get into Salem Harbor.
“The guns on Winter Island and those at the point will blow you to bits,” said Abednego Ward. He ought to know. He had helped place them there, before Micah Wild had jilted his daughter. “And you cannot run around them, or you will be holed by the chevaux-de- frise.” These were ten-foot-square pine boxes weighted with lead and sunk in the channel, bristling with iron spikes. “And then there is the chain across the harbor.”
They returned to the question over and over again, late into the night, with the candles blazing in the parlor of Trent’s mansion. The Reverend Edwards had stayed on, and though the cleric was not a military man, Sparhawk took some comfort from the presence of this fixture of his childhood.
Finally Sparhawk acknowledged the truth. “We cannot enter Salem Harbor without the permission of the Rebels there. It must be negotiated, and quickly.”
Trent nodded. “I will go,” he said.
“No, Father,” said Sparhawk. “I will go.” He knew what Angela Ferrers would demand, and he was prepared to give it.
• • •
He reached the Rebel camp at Cambridge before dawn, the pretty redbrick buildings of the college nestled in broad meadows within sight of the river. The smell was less appealing. The farmers and farriers and lawyers and innkeepers he had met on the road to Boston after Lexington were not soldiers. They did not know how to build a hygienic camp for ten thousand men, or how to set a picket line. Their officers had not been drawn from the ranks of military or aristocratic families and trained to leadership from a young age. They were elected by their men, or chosen by the Provincial Congress for their initiative, which was demonstrated by recruiting enough volunteers to form a command.
Sparhawk presented himself and asked to see Angela Ferrers. He was directed to a fine manor house of three stories with a hipped roof and carved balustrade, occupied at present by a company of mariners from Marblehead. He had a little sway with them, as their leader, a man named Glover, knew Abednego Ward and had overseen the refitting of the Sally.
Glover sent for the Merry Widow, and Angela Ferrers came down to meet Sparhawk in the parlor, wearing a blue silk night robe with her hair falling loose over her shoulders.
“Captain Sparhawk, or should I address you as the heir to Polkerris?”
“You knew, didn’t you, that my father was no murderer?” he said.
“Your father is in point of fact a murderer, several times over. He has killed seven men in duels. The privilege of rank, private law. It is still murder, even if they all deserved it. And while I knew that the Milton family had engineered the death of Trent’s first wife, your mother, I did not know how culpable Lord Polkerris himself might have been in the affair. That was not something I had the need, or the time, to investigate. Are you going after Sarah Ward for yourself or for your long-lost father?”
“Does it matter?” asked Sparhawk.
Angela Ferrers caressed the pearl-crusted mourning rings on her right hand. It was an unconscious gesture in a studied woman. “What matters is that this army is supplied with the matériel of war. We have veteran soldiers aplenty, but their cartridge boxes and powder horns are empty. And we lack guns. Benjamin Ward’s victory in Boston Harbor was an easy one. The next British supply ship will not be so handily gulled. And blockade runners are bold when it is a cargo of rice or French molasses they carry, but few men have the nerve to sail with a hold full of powder into the jaws of the most powerful navy in the world.
“Smugglers have served our needs up to now, but with open war upon us, we need men who have been trained in piracy, who can fire a shot across a merchantman’s bow and will blow her to flinders if she does not heave to. And for such as that—for genuine, old-fashioned piracy—there remains no better school in the world than the British Navy. If you wish to enter Salem Harbor with the Sally to find Sarah Ward, then I will require you to accept this.”
She drew a sealed document from her robe and placed it on the tea table. He broke the seal and read its contents. “I was not aware that the Americans had a navy,” he said.
“At present there are only provincial navies, mostly made up of flotillas of whaleboats and gun barges. You will notice that your commission is postdated. It will take effect on June fifteen, when I anticipate that a new commander will take charge of our forces, and it confirms you as captain in the army of the United Colonies, and charges you to seize and make a prize any British ships you encounter, though not to engage with men-of-war carrying superior guns. Fifty percent of civilian cargo will go to you and your crew, but all powder, muskets, cannon, uniforms, and ordnance must go directly to the army. I cannot sanction your actions in Salem, nor take any part in your quarrel with Micah Wild, but I can make certain that you are allowed to enter the harbor. I believe that Dr. Warren also offered other incentives, including real estate. You will find deeds for suitable properties enclosed.”
He opened the document she indicated, and found deeds for a fine house he had seen in Salem, a warehouse and a cottage he had heard tell of, and the lease for a significant portion of Misery Island.
“It is a generous offer,” said Sparhawk.
“But it is not an English barony
. What say you? Will it be Captain Sparhawk, or my Lord Polkerris?”
“Sparhawk,” he said without hesitation, because it was not an English baron’s son but James Sparhawk who was worthy of Sarah Ward.
• • •
Micah sent for ice from his icehouse and fresh water, and once both arrived, he warned Sarah against making another escape attempt.
“I will tie you to the bed if I must,” he said. Then he left to speak with Eli Derby.
Sarah rested for a little while and considered whether she might be able to climb down from the window.
The Ward house had been a humble antique structure in its bones, with ceilings barely seven feet tall—an easy drop from a second-story window.
Not so this monument to Micah Wild’s ambition. The ceilings of the ground floor were a lofty twelve feet. There was a porch roof she might climb out to and use to lower herself to the iron railings, but it would take a clear head and a strong grip, neither of which she now possessed.
She resolved to use one of the Chinese vases lining the fireplace mantel to brain whoever next opened the door, and make her way out down the back stairs. She only hoped that it would prove to be Micah Wild.
It was not Micah Wild. When Mrs. Friary put her gray head through the door, her face a mask of worry, a tray of cakes in her hands, Sarah hid the vase behind her back and sat down on the bed.
The old woman praised her courage for saving Ned, asked politely after her father’s health, and told her how happy everyone was to see her back where she ought to be. It wasn’t for her to say, of course, but everyone knew Micah had made a mistake marrying Elizabeth Pierce. And no one was going to mind when Sarah moved into the bedroom down the hall, even if the divorce took time to arrange.
Sarah resolved to go out the window as soon as Mrs. Friary left.
She ate the cakes first. Then she knotted up her skirts the way she used to when sneaking out of the house with Benji to drink rum in the Sally’s cutter, and swung her legs out the window. The porch over the door below was two feet from her window, and she was forced to swing, jump, and scramble onto it, clutching the painted white balustrade and thanking the architect for fastening it to the slate tiles with iron spikes.
From there the way down to the ground was easier. She lowered herself from the balustrade, wrapped her legs around one of the supporting columns, and shimmied down until her feet met the iron rail. Then, with relief—and scraped knees and elbows smudged with roof soot—she found herself outside the back door, looking toward the river.
And unfortunately, standing on the granite steps below was Micah Wild. “Is that how you used to get out of your father’s house to come see me?” he asked incredulously.
“It was easier with a smaller house,” she said. “I am leaving, Micah.”
He took her by the elbow. “We are both leaving. That damnable interfering Ferrers woman has poisoned the well with Eli Derby. There’s nothing for it now. We must collect the gold and make for Providence.”
She backed toward the door, but his men were waiting there for her, and when she tried to run, they caught her and forced her into the boat. Her screams, before they gagged her, brought Mrs. Friary and the servants to the door, but too late to help her, and then they were away down the river, heading for the harbor.
When they went aboard the Conant, Sarah recognized her skipper, Jerathmiel Finch, who had been her father’s first choice to captain the Sally on the run to Saint Eustatius. Micah had vetoed the choice, judging Jerathmiel insufficiently dedicated to the Rebel cause, but Sarah had suspected he was just insufficiently dedicated to Micah Wild. He was a sensible man and a better sailor than Molineaux had been, and Sarah hoped she might be able to prevail upon him to release her.
Micah shocked her when he ordered Captain Finch to clear the deck for action and make for Misery Island.
“What is happening?” she asked her former betrothed as he scanned the harbor with a spyglass.
“Derby would not partner with me, but we have been friends since childhood, and he had the decency to warn me. Your lover has been given permission to enter Salem Harbor and retrieve you, with the Sally.”
“We should run for it,” said Finch. “I do not have a man-of-war’s crew. I have boys lured by the promise of prize money. Farmers’ and shopkeepers’ sons. They have never fired a cannon.”
“We cannot run,” said Wild, “until we have landed at Misery Island and taken my property off.”
They made for Misery Island. Finch ordered netting rigged. It was meant to catch splinters during a battle, which meant he anticipated one. Next he called for powder. By the time the Conant came within sight of the windswept rock that Salem’s early settlers had dubbed Misery Island, they had spotted a sail on the horizon.
It was the Sally. Finch turned to Micah Wild. “Take the girl with you in the cutter, and leave her on the island until this business is done.”
Wild balked, but Finch, who, as Sarah recalled, had served in the navy in his youth, gave him no choice. “I won’t fight Abednego Ward’s schooner with his daughter aboard. It’s not right. It would be dishonorable, and damnably unlucky.”
Micah took his sword, two pistols, and a shovel and hurried Sarah into the boat. She watched the Sally draw near, her sails stiff in the breeze. Sarah’s heart rose in her throat. She had not seen the schooner fly like that since her father had been well. She stood up and waved, hoping her brother or Sparhawk, whoever had command of the Sally, might see her and forgo engaging the Conant, and come for her.
Her heart sank when the Sally tacked and disappeared behind Misery Island. They had not seen her. They likely meant to engage the Conant, to come up into the wind and gain the weather gauge, the crucial advantage in any fight at sea.
Sarah lost sight of the schooner as she went around the other side of the island, and now she had no doubt that the Sally meant to fight the Conant.
Micah dragged the boat up the rocky strand, and Sarah followed him through the scrubby trees to a clearing within sight of the water. He checked one of the trees—Sarah saw notches in the trunk—then crossed to the other side of the glade, then paced, counting, to a point slightly north of the clearing’s center.
Then he began to dig.
He did not look up when the guns of the Conant spoke, but Sarah did. Both ships were visible now from this vantage.
The Conant had fired high into the Sally’s rigging and struck a spar. One of her topsails tore loose and flapped in the wind. The Sally’s guns made no answer until she tacked and came up on the Conant again. Once more the Conant fired high, meaning, Sarah realized, to take her a prize. No doubt these had been Micah’s instructions to Jerathmiel Finch. He still wanted the Sally, after all.
The Sally exhibited no such delicacy. She fired on her downward roll, low into the hull of the Conant, and the Conant’s side exploded in a shower of splinters.
The Conant had been holed below the waterline—a crippling blow. She could not run now. And neither could Micah Wild.
Sarah turned to her former betrothed and saw that he had unearthed the familiar French chest. It was no longer filled as it had been in Molineaux’s cabin, but a small fortune in Spanish gold remained, and Wild was filling his sack with the glimmering coins.
“The Conant is crippled,” she said.
“But we have the gold,” replied Wild, scooping coins out of the chest. “And there is a snow docked on the other side of the island. We can take her to Marblehead, buy another schooner, hire another crew.”
“You may have the snow, sir,” said James Sparhawk, who had approached silently through the trees, pistol in hand, “but Sarah, and the gold, belong to me.”
• • •
Micah took the snow. As he crossed the island, his hangdog expression suggested he saw little scope now for his powers of persuasion and had no stomach to put his fencing lessons
to the test.
“There is water aboard, and she is seaworthy,” said Sparhawk as they watched Wild go. “Though where he will be welcome now is difficult to say.”
“Providence, perhaps,” she said. “The Browns have a reputation for boldness, and an idiosyncratic understanding of private property.” When Wild’s boat was out of sight and Sparhawk lowered his pistol, she threw herself into his arms.
“How is it that you are here? Who is commanding the Sally?” she asked.
“Benji captains her, and my father and yours shared command of her guns. They have cruelly mauled the Conant, by the looks of it. Mr. Cheap is with them as well, and Ned.”
They returned, hand in hand, to the clearing, where Micah Wild’s unburied gold lay glittering in the sun.
“It is evidence,” she said, “against Admiral Graves. You can use it to prove your innocence, to regain your rank.”
“Or I could use it to repair the Conant. Your brother, as Red Abed’s eldest, lays a legitimate claim to the Sally. And means to rebuild your family’s fortunes with her, as a privateer. And as it happens, I have already accepted a commission from the Americans, and been amply rewarded for it. I believe we hold the lease to a quarter of this island. There is a warehouse in town, no doubt intended for my ill-gotten goods, a cottage that I suspect we will sell immediately, unless my father wants it, and a house to which I understand you are attached.”
“What of Polkerris? Your father has acknowledged you. If you went home to England, you would be a baron.”
“England,” he said, “has never been my home. I was born on Nevis. And raised aboard frigates. And my father cannot go home to England. He traded the Americans’ intelligence to obtain the papers Angela Ferrers held, to obtain my freedom. He will settle, he tells me, wherever I do, at least until he has had time to correct my swordplay. The ‘dropsical Spaniard,’ apparently, has much to answer for.”
The Rebel Pirate Page 31