‘Where do you get them from?’ Cash wondered how white men, even men like these, could have anything to do with the natives.
‘’ere and there. There’s natives about.’
‘Give you any trouble?’
Brown’s lip twisted derisively. ‘They might, if we ’adn’t got no guns. But we ’as, see, so they’s scared of us. Try any tricks, we’d soon sort ’em out.’
‘So you’ve everything you want?’
Brown grinned, screwing up his face in an expression of indescribable cunning. ‘Well, now Cap’n, I wouldn’t say that, exacerly.’
‘What do you need?’
‘The blacks, see, they don’ drink like civilized folks. I got a powerful longin’ for rum, if you got any you can spare.’
‘I’ll send you a keg over.’
Brown pulled at his beard with dirty hands. ‘Why, thank ee kindly, Cap’n, that’ll be more’n welcome. Eh boys?’
The others grinned and nodded. Brown might boast about their being their own masters but there was no doubt who was the master here.
‘In return you can do something for me.’
‘Name it and we’ll see.’
‘Know how to catch and skin a seal?’
‘Reckon we do. Couple o’ the lads worked on a sealer once.’
‘I’ll pay you for any sealskins you get for me. They’ve got to be properly prepared, mind, no bullet holes or knife cuts.’
‘Nay, we’d do it proper. But pay us ’ow? We don’ ’ave much use for money ’ereabouts.’
‘I’ll pay in rum. One five gallon keg for every thousand skins.’
Brown licked his lips. ‘Payable up front, Cap’n?’
Cash smiled. ‘On delivery.’
‘Thousand skins is too many. One keg for every five ’undred?’
Cash shook his head. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. One keg for every eight hundred, provided you deal with no one else. But I’ll pay only proper skins, mind. No damaged ones.’
Brown wiped his beard thoughtfully. ‘Reckon there’ll be others comin’?’
‘Bound to, in time. That’s why I want to have as many skins lined up as I can before anyone else gets here. But remember, I can’t vouch for what they’ll be like. They know you’re here, they may not be so willing to live and let live as I am.’
Once again Brown bared his ragged stumps of teeth. ‘Reckon we can look after ourselves, Cap’n.’
‘Don’t be too sure. Some of these boats have cannon.’
‘’ow did you find us, if I might ask?’
‘Saw your smoke. You should keep your fire better controlled when there’s strangers about.’
‘Thought it ’ad to be summat like that. But I ain’t afeard of folks findin’ us. You’d never a’ laid eyes on us, if we hadn’t let yer.’
‘Any other groups like yours hereabouts?’ Cash asked.
Brown shook his head. ‘Not in this area, Cap’n. But there’s plenty all through the islands.’
When he got back to the ship, Cash arranged for the keg of rum to be sent across to the beach and told Hank about the deal he had made with the escapees.
‘You reckon they’ll not do the same for anyone else offers ’em the same?’ the mate wondered doubtfully.
‘Probably they will. But they’ll be working for us in the meantime.’
‘If they do it.’
‘What do we have to lose? We pay only on delivery. And if they do catch seal for us, it’s a cheap way of collecting pelts. In fact I think we’ll leave a team here and visit some of the offshore islands. Brown says there are other groups on them. Perhaps we can get them to help us, too. We need to have a look around anyway. I want to find out just how big the seal population is in this part of the world.’
They left a working party behind them to continue harvesting the seals in the estuary while Nantucket sailed down the coast, exploring the islands that lay scattered in the offshore waters.
After a week they had found groups of escaped convicts on three of the islands and made the same arrangements with two of them – sealskins for rum – that they had with Brown. The third group had not been interested. They had joined forces with a native band and warned the visiting seamen not to come troubling them again.
Two days later, some time after noon, they reached another island, bigger than those they had seen earlier. As they sailed slowly around it they saw that it was thickly forested, with a spine of hills running down its centre – a miniature copy of the countryside around the estuary where Cash had met John Brown. At first the island looked uninhabited but, after they had been sailing along the coast for two hours, Cash saw smoke.
‘Natives or convicts?’ Hank wondered.
‘Could be either,’ Cash said. ‘We can’t be that far away from where I came in Pelican. There were natives there. Maybe we’d better find out.’ He gave the order to close the coast. ‘The beaches are packed with seal so it’s worth taking a look in any case.’
They anchored three hundred yards from a mile-long beach of sand and shingle in a bay protected from the south and west by a jutting promontory of black rock crowned by pine trees. They waited to see if their arrival aroused any interest from the island’s inhabitants but when, after an hour, no one had appeared, Cash resolved to go ashore.
‘Maybe if they see us they’ll come out.’
Hank sucked his teeth dubiously. ‘And maybe they’ll bring their spears with ’em. You’d be better off staying on board, mister.’
‘There’s a rich seal harvest there,’ Cash said, indicating the crowded beach. ‘But I’ll not send men ashore until I know what’s going on. And there’s no other way to find out.’
He took with him the same men he had had when he met Brown. He carried pistols and a cutlass in his belt and a flensing knife in a sealskin sheath was secured to his right calf.
They quartered the beach but found nothing – no footprints, no sign of paths leading into the interior, no evidence of human beings at all. If it had not been for the smoke, Cash would have thought the island uninhabited.
‘No one’s tried to attack us. I suppose that’s something.’
Yet he felt uneasy. There was no sign of people but the hair on his neck prickled as though unseen eyes were watching them from the undergrowth.
They reached the end of the beach. A mound of huge boulders, chafed smooth by the sea, barred further progress.
‘I’ll have a quick look. See what’s on the other side. Then we’ll go back to the ship.’
He clambered with some difficulty over the rocks. Beyond them, the beach continued for perhaps a hundred yards before ending in a wall of vegetation.
Might as well look while I’m here, he thought.
There were a few seals, not many, and the same sense of being watched. The waves broke in a hiss and drag of gravel. The foam ran up the beach.
He reached the end, parted the undergrowth with his hand. A yard away, a face like a white skull glared at him with wild, bloodshot eyes.
‘What the hell …’
He leapt back, reaching for his pistol.
The apparition followed him, as quick as a striking snake. A body like a white skeleton with the stink of the grave seized him and threw him down on the sand.
THIRTY
Archibald Carter summoned Virginia to his study at five o’clock, immediately after his return from the office he had opened in a small building facing the jetty.
Some men liked to delegate certain discussions to their wives; Carter preferred to handle things, business and domestic, for himself. In all such matters he treated the people he dealt with in the same way, as a target for blandishment or coercion, depending upon what he believed appropriate to the case. It made no difference whether the individual was a business acquaintance, a member of his staff or his own flesh and blood, he drew no distinctions, at least until he had obtained what he wanted. He thought that tonight he might need coercion. However, he was willing to try blandishment, as a begin
ning. It was preferable, so long as it worked.
When Virginia came in he was sitting behind his desk, working through a pile of papers. Without raising his head he waved her to the seat opposite him and went on reading. After five minutes he stretched out his hand, picked up a quill pen and signed the last of the papers, replaced the pen in front of him, put the papers neatly together on one side of his desk and looked up at his daughter.
‘I thought I had better warn ye to change your dress after dinner this evening,’ he said. ‘We have a guest coming at seven o’clock. Mr Thomas Birkett.’ His pleasure at the prospect made his r’s more luxuriant even than usual.
Virginia looked at him, concern a fine line stitched between her eyebrows. ‘I can stay in my room if you would prefer, Papa. Mr Birkett has obviously not come to see me.’
‘Aye, but he has, ye see. That is precisely why he’s come,’ he chortled. ‘We’ve had a few discussions on the subject. I fancy he has a question he would like to put to you.’
Virginia’s skin turned cold. ‘I hope not, Papa.’ In what she hoped, without confidence, was a firm voice.
He stared at her, more amused than angry. ‘Ye hope not? How can ye have the slightest idea what the question is until he asks it?’
‘I can think of only one question a man might wish to address me.’
‘And?’
‘I would not wish to refuse him.’
He picked up the quill pen and tapped the feathers against his teeth. ‘There can be no question of a refusal.’
‘I do not love him, Papa.’
Carter frowned. Perhaps coercion would be needed after all. However, he was willing to make one more try. For Virginia’s sake. ‘Love will nae doot come later, if ye gie it the chance.’
‘I do not even like him.’
Wilfulness always exasperated him. ‘How can ye say such a thing? Ye dinna ken the man!’
‘And what little I know I dislike!’
Enough. He sharpened his voice. ‘Ye will no’ say such things! The man will be a guest in my hoose. I have the right to expect my ain family to treat him with the proper courtesy!’
‘But what should I say to him?’
‘I expect ye to listen to what he has to say and to answer him as your heart and your conscience advise.’
‘And if my heart and my conscience advise me to say no?’
So it would have to be coercion after all. ‘Then I would suggest ye think again, Virginia. A man looks to his daughter to repay all the care he has bestowed upon her. Think of the duty ye owe your mother, to say nothing of myself, and consider most carefully before ye answer him.’
‘What you are saying, Papa, is that I should accept him because you wish to be the father-in-law of a baronet!’
He would never have believed it. He stood, letting her see the anger shining like green flame in his eyes. ‘I will no’ be spoken to in such a way! Thomas Birkett is a well-connected man with a first-hand knowledge of how gentlemen conduct themselves. It fits him admirably to become a leader of a community which both your mother and I agree is sadly lacking in such things!’
He strutted around the room, pausing every so often to give her the benefit of his intimidating gaze. She did not look at him but sat with her head bowed, staring at her hands. He breathed heavily through his nose – perhaps the sound of his displeasure would be as effective as the sight of it. At length he stopped behind her. The sight of her bowed neck, so tender and fragile with the tendrils of fair hair curling softly upon it, increased his anger. If she was so helpless, what was she doing defying him in this unconscionable manner?
‘Your mother and I have been concairned about your conduct since we arrived in the colony. Most concairned! Ye are aware of that?’
‘I have done nothing.’
‘Have ye no’?’
He returned to his chair, determined to break this unlooked-for resistance as quickly as possible.
‘And how would ye describe your present attitude, miss?’
Now, at last, she looked at him. ‘I do not have an attitude, Papa. I said simply that I do not like Mr Birkett and would not be married to him!’
‘Would not, i’ faith!’ He laughed, a sound totally without humour. ‘Would not! And who are ye, miss, to presume to tell your ain father what ye would and wouldna do?’
She threw a frightened glance at him before returning to the study of her hands clenched white-knuckled on her lap. She murmured something he chose not to hear.
‘Speak up, miss!’
‘I said I know you would not wish me to marry where I would be unhappy.’
‘Ye’re right! My family’s happiness is aye at the head of my concairns. Ye wish to marry for love. Well, well, I understand that. It’s what every bairn wants. But love is no’ something that comes to us wrapped and delivered like a gift from heaven!’ He let himself laugh a little, pleased with his flight of fancy. ‘It’s something that grows. With time and patience. It is something ye need to work on, to bring to fruition. I can truthfully say, Virginia, I love and respect your mother even more today than I did when first we met.’ He spoke unctuously. He had not loved his wife when he met her, he did not love her now nor had he truly respected another human being in his life. But the sentiment was appropriate to the circumstances and truth, after all, was a tool to be used, as any other. It did not occur to him that, having dealt with him nearly every day of her life, Virginia understood very clearly the reality behind the pious words. Whether her feeble defences would be capable of resisting his assault was another matter.
‘I have nae doot that before ye’ve been married a twelvemonth ye’ll come to love your husband very dearly.’
It was part of his strategy to talk at all times as though the object of the deliberation had already been agreed, that they were merely discussing the details of how that object might best be achieved.
Still she resisted, though her distress was obvious in every syllable she uttered, every anguished glance she gave him across the desk that divided them like a symbol of their lives.
‘I feel … I do not see how I can hope to feel love for someone when I neither like nor respect him.’
‘I have already said it’s unreasonable to entertain such notions about a man ye dinna ken one way or the other.’ His tone grew silky and her fearful heart drew tight inside her. ‘Perhaps ye’d like to say why ye entertain such prejudices against a man of good family – I doubt ye’d seek to quarrel with that description – whom ye’ve hardly met?’
She clenched her fists. ‘I do not know, Papa.’
‘Well, I know, miss! I know very well! It’s because of the attachment ye’ve formed for this young Tremain fellow.’
She protested, ‘I have formed no attachment, Papa …’
‘Let me finish, please. Ye will no’ deny, I imagine, that ye danced with him at the Hagwoods’ house?’
‘I danced with Mr Birkett, too, Papa.’
Colour rose to his pale cheeks. ‘Dinna fence words wi’ me, miss! And after the dance, what then?’
She was lost. ‘It … it was warm. We stepped outside for a minute.’
‘On to the terrace, eh?’
‘Yes, Papa.’
‘And no further, of course?’
‘I believe we … strolled down the walk to the river. Between the flares. There were others there and –’
‘Ye believe, you say? Did ye walk to the river or did ye no’?’
‘Yes, Papa.’
‘And ye still claim there is no attachment?’
‘I know it was unwise, Papa. Foolish. But all I –’
He brushed her words aside with a carefully-calculated rage. ‘I am to think my ain daughter, whom I have loved and cherished all my life, takes her responsibilities to herself and to me so lightly that she walks, unescorted, mind ye, and after dark, with a chance acquaintance, a man for whom she feels nothing? Is that what ye want me to believe?’
He scowled at her across the desk, the very picture
, he believed, of moral outrage. It would not be much longer; there were tears in her eyes already and her lips were shaking.
‘It was not as you describe it –’
He interrupted. ‘Ye ken yon Tremain came to see me?’
‘Of course. I … was there, if you remember.’
‘So ye were. Asked me for permission to call on ye.’ He snorted. ‘Forsooth! I soon sent him about his business, I can tell ye!’
‘But why, Papa? I understand his father is moderately well connected …’
So she had been asking questions of her own. It was more serious than he had suspected. As well he had taken early steps to deal with the matter.
‘His father is the younger son of a minor squire. In Cornwall. They have little land, no prospects, no name. There is no title in the family. All they have is a reputation – a bad reputation.’ Pleasurably, he allowed the rage to build up in him once again. ‘The father was a smuggler and a rake and by all accounts the son is little better.’ He stared at her triumphantly as he delivered the final thrust. ‘He lives with a convict woman. Ye knew that, did ye?’
Her face was parchment white. She was trembling so much he was afraid she would faint. Time to ease the pressure on her or she would be too unwell to meet Thomas Birkett when he arrived. Some fatherly concern was needed. He stood, walked around the desk and laid his arm around her trembling shoulders.
‘We must nae be too hard on him. It’s natural enough for a young man o’ his background. But ye can see for yourself, it would hardly be suitable for ye to go on seeing him.’ He patted her gently on the shoulder. ‘Now, get along wi’ you, girl. And remember, your best dress for tonight.’
*
That night Thomas Birkett was on his best behaviour. While he was confident not only of his personal charm but the weight of his family name and prospects, he had enough brains to realise how important to him was a successful outcome of this evening’s discussions.
Put at its simplest, he had insufficient money to live as he wished. Archibald Carter, on the other hand, had the money and in the course of their discussions had indicated his willingness to release a sufficiency of it – five thousand guineas was the sum they had agreed upon after he had asked originally for ten – in return for the prospect of his daughter eventually becoming Lady Birkett.
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