Captain in Calico

by George MacDonald Fraser

  ‘Certain,’ said Rackham. He was conscious of a great relief. Penner’s acceptance meant more than the Major knew, for to Rackham it was another professional opinion pronouncing in favour of the enterprise. ‘It’s settled, then?’

  ‘Settled,’ said Penner, and they shook hands. The Major sighed. ‘Perhaps I’ll live to regret it. God knows, I grow greedy as I grow old.’ But he said it with some satisfaction.

  It was a satisfaction that Anne Bonney was at first slow to share when, booted, breeched, and cloaked in black, with a broad-brimmed hat pulled down over her face, she joined Rackham in the Cinque Ports that night and found the Major with him above stairs.

  ‘Aye, well, ye might have chosen worse,’ she conceded after Rackham had urged the advantages of the Major’s participation. ‘It’ll be one more sprightly young gallant to bear me company on the voyage.’

  ‘On the voyage?’ Rackham stared. ‘But you cannot come on the voyage.’

  ‘Can’t I, by God! And why not?’

  ‘Why, because—’ Rackham began enumerating reasons, but she cut him short.

  ‘I expected this. You’d have me wait behind until all was over, I suppose. Let me tell you that where you go I go, and that only on those terms will you go at all.’ She swung one booted leg over the other and smiled grimly. ‘For only I know the argosy’s date of sailing, and without that you’re done.’

  They protested, but there was no answer to her. She had the whip hand, and perforce they must agree. And with that question settled to Mistress Bonney’s satisfaction they proceeded to discussion of details.

  Rackham announced that he had marked the Kingston for the voyage. He knew her qualities, and he had learned only that evening that she was soon to be towed out beyond Hog Island to careen. This point had decided him, for it would be far simpler to seize a ship anchored outside the harbour. Her actual capture would be made the night after the argosy had sailed, and it would be effected by Rackham’s thirty men. They would sail her out to Salt Cay, where Penner’s sloop would be waiting, and his crew – who would be in ignorance of what was forward – would supplement the Kingston’s manpower. Then they would pursue the argosy, whose probable course they would have learned from the information that Anne Bonney was to supply.

  Since they could plan no further for the moment that concluded their business, and Penner bade them good-night. It was another hour, however, before Anne Bonney took her leave with a promise that she would keep in touch with Rackham through her slave-boy Nicodemus, and visit him with information when opportunity offered.

  ‘And not just with information,’ she murmured as she kissed him good-night.

  ‘Have a care, lass.’ He tightened his embrace. ‘That husband of yours … if he finds out that you visit me it could go ill for you.’

  She mocked him for his fears, and slipped away into the night, leaving him with an uneasiness he could not define.

  It said little for Woodes Rogers’ intelligence system that the plot was hatched and Rackham’s thirty men recruited without so much as a breath of it reaching the authorities. By the week’s end Rackham had learned through Anne Bonney, who had aids to investigation denied the Governor, that the argosy would be the brig Star, of thirty guns, and carrying a hundred and eighty seamen and marines. Since the Kingston had twenty-four pieces and his crew and Penner’s men would total two hundred, Rackham was well satisfied. And on the Monday night Anne Bonney came to the Cinque Ports again with the news that the Star would sail on the Wednesday.

  Rackham sighed with a relief not unmixed with caution. ‘It’s going smooth. Too smooth, perhaps. I’ll be glad to get a deck beneath my feet again.’

  But Anne Bonney had no reservations. ‘Why, what should go amiss? You’ll take the Kingston, and we’ll take the Star, and then we’ll be far away, and richer than we ever dreamed.’

  Thereafter they forgot the Kingston for a while, but before she left him they agreed that she would return on the Wednesday evening at nine o’clock so that Penner could take her aboard the sloop while Rackham and his men prepared for their attempt on the brig now riding out beyond Hog Island.

  Exultant as she was, it was not to be expected that Anne Bonney should notice as she slipped out of Rackham’s room that farther down the passage a door which had been slightly ajar closed softly as she passed. Beyond that door stood Kane, Bonney’s overseer, an unpleasant smile on his bearded features as he listened to her footsteps receding on the stairs. So his master had been right, and Mistress Anne was caught tripping. He drew a coin from his pocket and tossed it in the direction of the buxom negress who drowsed on the bed, then, pulling down his hat, he in his turn made his way from the inn by the back way.

  Bonney was in bed when Kane returned to the plantation, so the overseer’s report had to wait until morning. He presented it to his master while the latter sat alone at breakfast, and Bonney’s little eyes narrowed as he listened. When Kane had finished his recital, garnished as it was by his own obscene speculations, the planter pushed aside the plate on which his food lay untasted.

  ‘So. Then I must know when she intends to see him again. Find out, Kane.’

  The grin on Kane’s heavy features vanished. ‘Am I to ask her?’

  Bonney gestured in annoyance, but his eyes were everywhere but on his overseer’s face. ‘Fool! Would she be like to tell you? Her slave-boy, man. He must know. It is obvious she must have been out at his contrivance. Question him.’ For a brief second he looked Kane in the face. ‘Find out within the hour. I hold you responsible, Kane.’

  Kane’s face split in an evil smile. ‘Aye, sir, you’ll know within the hour.’ Then a thought struck him, and he paused, fingering his scrubby chin. ‘Though the brat’s mighty staunch to her, at that. Ye could skin some o’ these blacks alive and they’d never tell if they’d no mind to.’

  ‘Then skin him alive if need be,’ said Bonney softly. ‘Never tell me you’ve no means to make a man speak, let alone a child.’

  Kane considered. ‘Aye, it might be. Wait, though. The little bastard’s got a grandfather in the plantation. An old rogue that minds the water-butt. How would it be to ask him – in front of the boy?’ His smirk left Bonney in no doubt of what was implied.

  ‘Do what you please. Only find out. And see, too, that Mistress Bonney, who is in her room, is kept there. Meanwhile, no word to a soul.’

  Kane left him with the joyous satisfaction of a man who has before him a pleasant task which he can easily accomplish. He was in no doubt of this, and having issued his orders he took his way to a shed at some distance from the house, there to wait until little Nicodemus and his grandfather should be brought. Presently, when they arrived, escorted by the negro guards employed on the plantation, where Bonney and Kane himself were the only white men, the overseer addressed his question to the slave-boy.

  Terrified, the child rolled his eyes towards his grandfather, but the old negro, who had barely understood the question, since he knew nothing of the matter behind it, could give him no assistance. So Nicodemus stood dumb and frightened, and Kane snapped an order.

  In panic Nicodemus watched while his grandfather was spreadeagled to four stakes in the earth floor of the hut. The old negro lay face down, but kept trying to turn his head to see what was happening above him. He did not speak, but they could hear his teeth chattering in his head.

  Kane licked his lips and picked up his whip from the table. It was a hideous thong of plaited leather, and as every slave on the plantation knew, Kane could make it cut to the bone. He snaked out the lash so that its tip lay within a few inches of the old man’s face. Then he repeated his question.

  Wild with terror, and faced with the agonising choice of seeing his grandfather flogged – probably to death – or betraying the mistress he worshipped (for a betrayal Nicodemus realised it would be), the boy stared in horrified fascination. Then he shook his head and Kane grinned and swung his arm.

  A minute later the child was kneeling by his grandfather�
��s body, crying piteously, and in an almost incoherent torrent of words trying to explain that what they asked him was something he must not tell. The old slave smiled at him out of a face grey with agony, and when Nicodemus, sobbing, asked him a question, he shook his grizzled head and laid it in the dust again.

  Kane swore and kicked the boy aside. Nicodemus crouched with his hands over his face, but he could still hear the sickening crack of Kane’s whip as it cut the life out of his grandfather’s body.

  Presently the whipping stopped, and he was wrenched to his feet again. Kane jerked his thumb at the inert figure on the floor.

  ‘Must I flog him to death? It’s all one to me. Or will you come to your senses?’ He shook the child to and fro. ‘When does she go again, ye little swine?’

  Nicodemus looked past him at the body of the old man, and then blurted out: ‘To-morrow.’

  Kane held him at arm’s length, and grinned into the little dark face that was darker now with hatred. ‘I could ha’ burned you to death afore you’d ha’ told me,’ he said. ‘Just as well ye did, for the old bastard’s dead.’ He let the boy go. ‘Pity ye didn’t know, eh?’ He turned on his heel. ‘Keep that brat in the roundhouse,’ he instructed the guards, and strode back to the house to report his success.

  ‘Very well,’ said Bonney, when Kane told him. He sat in silence for some minutes, his plump fingers playing with a quill, and when he spoke he kept glancing shiftily about the room as though he suspected unseen listeners.

  ‘This was the evidence we needed,’ he reflected aloud. ‘You must have your tale pat, Kane, when the time comes to tell it to the Governor.’

  Kane was taken aback. ‘The Governor?’

  ‘But of course.’ Bonney’s eyes were bright with malicious pleasure. ‘Who else? We must have all in train. She is a wife, and adultery is a serious matter, you know. If she prefers a gallant to myself she must be prepared to pay the price.’ It was the measure of the man that he could discuss his own cuckoldry in front of his servant. ‘Yes, we shall to His Excellency, and Mistress Bonney shall be dealt with for what she is. Do you know what that means, Kane?’ Bonney rose from the table, and the only sign of excitement about him was the quill twisting nervously in his fingers. ‘I shall tell you. She shall go to the cart-tail. I shall see her lashed through the streets by the public hangman. Oh, she’ll not hold her head so high once she’s had the whip about her body, I’ll warrant. And it may be that she’ll come home again a more dutiful wife.’

  Kane was a hardy rascal, but even he was shaken by the venom of the other’s tone and the outrageousness of his suggestion. He stood dumb while Bonney slowly paced the room.

  ‘And for her pirate lover,’ Bonney went on, ‘I think we can contrive without Governor Rogers’ assistance. Yes, he shall be our first concern: a grace before meat.’ He chuckled softly. ‘But that you may leave to me. I think I can promise Captain Rackham even livelier entertainment than he had on his first visit, and Mistress Anne shall share it with us before we take her to the Governor.’

  10. THE SNARE

  From a small knoll overlooking the promontory of Dick Point, and conveniently screened on its landward sides by scrub, Rackham and Penner watched the brig Star dip her stately way across the sapphire bay beneath them. Her canvas gleamed in the bright sunshine, and across the half mile of water came the squeal of the bosun’s pipe and the creak of tackle as she swung on to her south-easterly course and glided down the coast.

  Rackham watched with a glass to his eye while Penner, his coat laid by and his close-cropped head swathed in a handkerchief, lay with his chin in his hands and blinked contentedly on the beauty of the scene.

  In the glass Rackham could see quite plainly the features of the officers on the poop, and the scarlet-coated sentries at the ladder. When he trained the lens on the rigging he could even make out the knife at the waist of a half-naked sailor swinging his way up the futtock shrouds and into the main-top.

  ‘I could wish she carried more rubbish on her timbers,’ he observed to Penner. ‘There’s a good greasy keel under that water. Set her running before the wind and she’ll lead the Kingston a fine dance. Still, she’ll need all her speed and more if she’s ever to see Port Royal.’

  Penner screwed up his eyes against the sunlight. ‘Why is Rogers sending her to Jamaica at all?’ he wondered. ‘She might have made a straight trip to England without danger, or if he wants to find an escort for her, what ails him that he doesn’t send her north to Charles Town? He’s risking his treasure in the lousiest, most dangerous stretch of ocean between Campeche and Carlisle Bay. It’s most plaguily odd.’

  ‘Not when you think of the other risks,’ said Rackham. ‘It had to go quickly, but he daren’t send it to Charles Town, with the Florida Channel so thick with Dons there’s hardly room for the fish. A straight run to England’s too risky for a single ship, he reckons, so he looks to Port Royal and there he sends the Star. He’ll let the Jamaica Squadron worry about her. Anyway, what does he have to fear?’ He pointed down at the brig, which now had them directly on her starboard beam. ‘She’s nimble enough to outsail most vessels: Rogers is a seaman, and ye can wager he picked her himself. She’ll not outsail the Kingston, though, unless I’ve forgotten my trade.’

  ‘But could he not have sent to Jamaica for an escort, and then made the ocean crossing in safety?’ Penner persisted.

  ‘And how long would it have taken to get one of the Jamaica Squadron up here? Every night Rogers would have been prowling down to his cellars to see the Spaniards weren’t pinching his dollars. He wanted it out of his hands, so he couldn’t be blamed for losing it. It’s safer at sea than ever it was here. I had some of it aboard long enough to know. I ran the bloody stuff from Cuba to St Kitts looking for a safe place, and the longer I sailed the surer I was it was safest of all right under my feet.’ He shook his head at the recollection. ‘I know what’s been in Rogers’ mind, how he’s been lying awake of nights, sweating.’

  The Major sighed. ‘Aye, it’s some consolation, now, when you lose a thing, knowing that him that stole it is having the horrors wondering what to do with it. Can ye picture the dirty looks there’s going to be aboard the Kingston when we’ve taken the booty and everyone’s ready to cut his neighbour’s throat?’

  ‘I’ve seen it before,’ said Rackham. He stood up and shook the sand from his clothing. ‘I’ll know how to deal with it.’

  The Major rose and donned his coat. Together they watched the Star as she stood down from the point, the Union flag stirring gently at her peak.

  ‘South over Tongue of the Ocean,’ said Rackham. ‘Then south-westerly through the Old Channel for the Windward Passage. If she ever rounds Cape Maysi it’ll be our own fault.’ He smiled. ‘One way or the other, we can say good-bye to the sea for good.’

  Separately they returned to town, Penner to make his last preparations aboard his sloop which lay in the harbour ready to sail, Rackham to take a last look by daylight at the Kingston, lying now beyond Hog Island, the flat bank that protected the harbour from the open sea. Standing in a doorway out of the hustle of the waterfront he could look across the channel and see the Kingston’s masts above the scrub which dotted Hog Island: not until to-morrow or the day after did the port authorities intend to beach her for careening, and by then, if all went well, she would be speeding south in the wake of the Star. For half an hour he surveyed her and then made his way back to the inn, a prey to impatience and growing excitement.

  The period of waiting through the evening was the worst part. Rackham sat alone in his room in the Cinque Ports, his solitude relieved only by occasional visits from Ben, who came to report that his thirty picked men were assembling in the taverns along Fish Street. There were three here and five there; never too many together, in case someone should become suspicious, and Ben made periodic trips along the street to see that all was well and that they kept moderately sober.

  At nine o’clock a knock sounded at the door, and Rackham made haste
to open it, expecting Anne. Instead, it was a serving man from the tap-room with a note which he said had been handed in by a negro who had gone as soon as his message was delivered.

  Frowning, Rackham turned the little packet over in his hands. It bore only the superscription ‘Cap. Jn. Rackham’, and was sealed with a blob of wax. Signing to the man to wait, he broke it open and carried it close to the candle to read it.

  ‘He discovered us from Nicodemus (it read) and keeps me close here. In the morning he goes to seek the Governor. Quickly, for God’s sake.’ The note was signed ‘A.’

  For a moment Rackham stared at the words, then he wheeled round. ‘A black gave you this? Where is he?’ He took two quick steps and caught the drawer by the shoulder. ‘How long since?’

  ‘But a moment.’ The drawer grimaced under his grip. ‘He – he went. I never saw—’

  With an oath Rackham sent him staggering towards the door, where he nearly collided with Penner, who loomed suddenly behind him. The Major took in the situation and jerked his thumb in a gesture of dismissal.

  ‘Out, my lad,’ he said, and the drawer made his escape. Penner turned to Rackham.

  ‘What’s amiss?’

  Rackham held out the letter in silence. He was blazing with rage inwardly. That this should have happened, and at the most vital hour. Anne Bonney should have been in the room with him at this moment, and Penner should be preparing to take her aboard his sloop. Instead, she was locked up in her house, a mile from town, and their whole enterprise was in jeopardy.

  Penner, having scanned the note, was considering that very point, but he was not the kind to waste his breath in senseless recrimination.

  ‘It’s devilish inconvenient,’ he said, watching Rackham.

  ‘Inconvenient!’ Rackham swore savagely. ‘That prying little bastard Bonney has poxed us nicely, rot his soul! You and she should be on the sloop, and I should be on my way to the Kingston by this. What the devil’s to be done?’