Suki, page 41
It was time for Jack to take up a vantage point if he were to make best use of his pistols. As Blue watched, he loaded each in turn, opened the flash pan, sprinkled in his powder — dry as a bone — closed the cover. Then he braced himself against the rocking of the ship, climbed the rigging, a pistol in each hand, and was ready. All he needed now was a prestigious target.
The cannons were being fired again. He could hear the thunder of their ricochet and the air was full of smoke and the smell of cordite. There was a stay falling below him, fire spurting red from the quarterdeck, a line of raised muskets gleaming, and a man’s hand lying in the gunnel torn off at the wrist and still clutching a ramrod. The noise was more insistent than the pounding of African drums and heat rose with an intensity that Africa had never equalled. And there immediately below him was the French captain, white gloves neat in his epaulette, gold-topped cane elegantly in hand, directing operations and too good a target to miss. He cocked the first pistol, took aim and fired. For a few seconds, the flash completely blinded him, then the red mist of it cleared and, peering through the smoke, he saw, with a sense of total disbelief and amazement, that the captain had been hit and was lying on the deck, rolling in pain and clutching at his chest. What capital sport!
A voice yelled at him to ‘Look out!’ and glancing down, he saw a French musket levelled in his direction and, all instinct now, he swung his body sideways away from its trajectory. After that, things happened at such speed that there was nothing but smoke and noise and action. He flung the used pistol down into Blue’s outstretched hands, cocked the second, turned, aimed, fired into a muddle of half-seen figures. Missed. Plague on it! Now he must reload. But before he could move, the first pistol was handed back to him, presented by the handle what’s more, and he heard Blue’s voice shouting ‘’Tis ready, Mr Jack!’ and so he turned to fire again. This time he saw a musketeer staggering backwards, screaming and falling into the smoke. Then a volley of fire peppered the sail furled below him. Oh, he was an eagle, soaring in the rigging, picking off his prey with every shot. Change hands, exchange pistols, take aim, fire, the rhythm as easy as breathing. He recognised that the Yorick was changing tack, and swung further aloft to take up another position, roaring with excitement and exhilaration. He was magnificent, fabulous, invincible.
Then, suddenly, it was all over. The French frigate was turning, setting all the canvas she could muster, her mainmast split and her topsail in tatters, holed at the water line and yawing heavily, admitting defeat. The merchantman was left an easy prize, without a defender and little more than half a league away. The pistol in Jack’s hand was still smoking but the battle was won.
There was a flurry of doffed caps, a growling cheer, voices bellowing orders but for a while he stood above it all, unable to move because he was shaking so violently that he had to cling to the rigging for fear of falling. Blue was looking up at him, calling ‘Mr Jack, Mr Jack! You want more pistol?’ but he hadn’t got the breath to answer. ’Od’s bones and brains, he thought, what a monstrous wonder it is to go to war.
‘Bully for you, Jack!’ Mr Jerome called up. ‘As pretty a piece of shooting as I ever saw.’
Praise gave him back his breath. ‘Shall we board the merchantman?’
‘Be like. Stay where you are. We may need your good aim again.’
But as they drew near to the French trader, she hove to and flagged a message admitting defeat.
‘Here’s a thing,’ the second mate said. ‘She’s to be took without a shot fired.’
The captain wasn’t so sure. ‘We’ll not trust the swabbers,’ he said. ‘There could be trickery afoot an’ I ain’t about to be caught by it, damme.’
They approached cautiously, inching towards their enemy until they could see the patches on her sails and count the members of her crew who were lined up on deck. The captain stood apart from the rest and had a distinctly piratical air about him, with a red bandanna about his neck, a black patch over one eye and a tricorn tucked under his arm. But he answered soberly when Mr Jerome took the hailer to ask if he was prepared to surrender.
‘Aye, sir. We ’ave Engleesh aboard.’
They were so close to one another that there was little more than a foot of water between them. ‘Have you indeed?’ the second mate called. ‘How many?’
The Frenchman considered. ‘Twenty, thirty.’
‘Where are they, dammit?’
‘I show.’
The boarding party swung across, muskets slung across their shoulders and bristlingly alert but there were no tricks and no opposition. Watched by his enemies, the French captain led the way to the hatches where, after a few fumbling minutes and some altercation with two of his officers, two dozen dishevelled men emerged from the hold, blinked in the sunlight and turned to wave their thanks to their rescuers. English indeed and part of the original crew of the ship.
‘She was the Mary Elizabeth afore she was took by this ’ere load o’ plaguey swabbers,’ their leader explained. ‘British ship. Out of Portsmouth. They took the officers ashore in the Windwards. We was pressed to stay on an’ sail her on account of they was short of crew.’
It was a common enough practice. ‘What’s her cargo?’
Silks apparently. Some spices, which were scenting the air now that the hatch was open. Some ivory, although they couldn’t say where it was stashed. ‘Might be some gold. They was cagey about it but we was give a powerful escort, which do make ’ee wonder.’ ‘If there’s gold, we’ll find un,’ Mr Jerome told him happily. ‘Cheer up, me lads. We’m your escort now, which I daresay you won’t object to, on account of we’ve sent your Frenchie off wi’ grapeshot in her ears an’ her tail atween her legs. Now I’m a-here, to captain the ship for ’ee. Choose me a crew, sir, an’ I’ll send the rest aboard the Yorick for safekeeping. Here’s our other ship a-coming, d’you see? We shall be good company.’
The Bonny Beaufoy was labouring towards them, low in the water with the weight of her cargo. Signals were flagged to her and she hove to and settled to wait for them. It took another hour to do all that needed to be done, and even then the wounded were still being attended to when all three ships set off in convoy to resume their journey. But the hold of the Yorick was full of captured Frenchmen, the crew of the Yorick were assured of good prize money and Jack was a free man and something of a hero.
That night, when the blood had been scrubbed from the decks and the three most badly wounded men had had their stumps sealed with hot tar and been carried below to groan until they recovered or died, Jack dined in the wardroom as though he were one of the Yorick’s officers, with Blue behind his chair to wait on him and an admiring company to drink his health. ‘You’re a plaguey fine shot, sir, damme if you ain’t.’ By the end of the meal, since one officer had been grazed by gunshot and Mr Jerome was on other duties, he had become temporary officer of the watch, with Blue as his accepted servant. By the end of the week, he’d been accepted by the crew — grudgingly and with a deal of grumbling which was only to be expected but acknowledging that at least he was a man who’d proved his worth under fire.
Even Mr Cooper allowed that he could be gentry. ‘He’m raving mad when it comes to the savages,’ he said. ‘There’s narry a one of us would agree with him on that score, for ’tis plain folly when all’s said an’ done, but he’s got “bottom”, I’ll say that for him. They’m a rum lot, the gentry, an’ given to folly an’ suchlike, an’ he do seem to go on the way they goes on, with pistols an’ all. Take that boy of his’n. ’Tis the sort of thing they goes in for. They has ’em like puppy dogs. I seen ’em in London.’
So the voyage continued, more or less uneventfully except for the occasional drunken brawl, one of which ended in a flogging. The three ships kept close company in an empty ocean. The ship’s carpenter repaired the deck. Two of the crippled men died and were buried at sea, the third made a slow recovery. Mr Jerome reported that there was no gold aboard the Mary Elizabeth but that the silk was of good quality and there was a deal of ivory. The weather wasn’t always fair but what storms they weathered were less violent than others they’d known and there were no slaves aboard to plague Jack’s conscience, and no sickness and no sign of the French. Best of all, as an officer, he had a chance to see the ship’s charts and find out what speed they were making and how rapidly they were returning home.
‘We shall be in England pretty soon,’ he told Blue, one lazy afternoon, ‘and then I must be taken from the ship with my hands bound, I fear.’ That had been established with the captain, who said he could see no way else, or Mr Smith would want to know the reason why. ‘You must take this note and hide it in your breeches and if things do not go well with me, you must go to the inn whose name I have written there and ask for the man, whose name I have written there. Do you understand?’
Blue looked worried. Although he could speak well and understand most of what was said to him, written instructions were beyond him.
‘Should it come to the worst — which I doubt, but should it — find a kind person in fine clothes, and ask them to read it for ’ee.’ Blue agreed, although dubiously. ‘Yes, Mr Jack.’
‘Cheer up, me lad,’ Jack said, ruffling his woolly hair. ‘It may all work out for the best yet. I’ll run mad rather than be sent to prison or the hangman. I’ve done good service aboard this ship and when Mr Bradbury hears of it, he’ll not punish me further. He’ll see ’twas folly and mischief-making. I’ve yet to tell him of the factor and his scurvy tricks, which ain’t a thing to be ignored. No, no, we’ll come through, the pair of us, and then we’ll live like lords. What do ’ee think to that?’
Blue held the paper and didn’t know what to think. ‘What is lords?’ he asked.
Chapter 29
As soon as Suki Brown arrived in Appleton House, she searched out pen, ink and paper, settled William on her lap and wrote a letter to Farmer Lambton, explaining that she and Miss Ariadne had been banished to the country, hoping that Mrs Lambton and the baby continued well, and begging him please to tell Captain Jack where she was. ‘He’m bound to come to the farm, for to collect Bow, for I never knowd a man love a horse as he do that one, which I hopes is well and no trouble to you.’ After she’d signed her name, she was tempted to rebuke him for his part in her sudden exile, but she forbore because she was trying to be a good Christian soul — and besides, he was still stabling the horse, and until the Bradburys remembered to pay her, she had no money to send him for its fodder.
She was rather put out to discover that the letter couldn’t be sent until Saturday, which was days away. But she couldn’t complain about that either because Mrs Norris, the housekeeper, was such a kindly soul and explained it to her so patiently. ‘Lord love ’ee, dearie, we don’t get post hereabouts. Leastways not when the master’s away. ’Twill go a Saturday, for ’ee. I’ll make sure of it.’
So Saturday it had to be and an irritating wait it was, for life at Appleton House was slow and enervating, particularly after the bustle of Bath. There was plenty of work going on all around her for the estate was at the centre of a large apple orchard and had its own home farm in the grounds, with a dairy for butter and cheese, a herd of orchard pigs to be fed on the skimmed milk and whey, a dovecote for over six hundred birds that had to be cleaned out most religiously every week, a sizeable stables with its own smithy, to say nothing of all the labour in the kitchen where bread was baked every day and ale brewed for the entire estate. But that was no work for a lady’s maid and, as her particular lady did nothing but sit silent in her room, there was little to keep her occupied.
The house was no help to her either, for it was a dark, old-fashioned place, with leaded windows that gave very little light and oak panelling that was cracked and ancient and horribly oppressive in all the main rooms. There were no modern devices at all, not even a pump in the kitchen, as she discovered on her second morning. All their water had to be drawn from a well in the courtyard, and a back-breaking job that was. As to the kitchen, that was just a low dark cave — full of grease and fumes — where the sun never penetrated and the stone flags were always chill underfoot. ’Twas no wonder Miss Ariadne was low spirited.
Mrs Norris was most concerned about her young mistress. ’Tain’t nat’ral to sit so, day after day, poor soul,’ she said to Suki at the end of their first week together. ‘Shall we try her with a little junket? What do ’ee think to that? If she got a sore throat ’tis no wonder she don’t speak.’
But junkets didn’t work and neither did apple jelly and after another week Mr Norris was called in from his work in the dairy to discuss the situation. Like his wife, he was short, stout, good tempered and hard working. But he confessed himself baffled by Miss Ariadne’s silence.
‘Happen a walk in the air would do it,’ he said, scratching his tousled hair.
So a walk in the air was tried. That evening, when William had been fed and settled, the two girls put on their straw bonnets, wound their shawls about their waists — country style, since there were none nearby to rebuke Ariadne for vulgar behaviour — and set out for a stroll through the fields.
The moon was already out, flat and smudged as a white penny in a sky still daytime blue, the apple orchards were heavy with burgeoning fruit, honeysuckles breathed their languorous perfume into the evening air, and below the gentle curve of the hill, the river shimmered like shot silk.
‘’Tis a cruel world,’ Ariadne said suddenly, ‘which is sad to think upon when it can be so beautiful.’ It was the first time she’d spoken since they arrived and her voice was husky with lack of use.
Suki’s concern was more practical than philosophical. ‘How of your silence?’ she asked. ‘Do ’ee mean to stay mute all summer?’ Ariadne’s voice was instantly firm. ‘I mean to stay mute,’ she said, ‘until the time has come for me to speak.’
‘When will that be?’
‘When I have something to say, I imagine.’
‘Don’t ’ee fear they’ll call the surgeons again?’
Ariadne grimaced. ‘What worse could they do than they have done already?’
‘They could kill you,’ Suki told her hotly. ‘I thought they had.’
‘But as you see, I am still here,’ Ariadne said, smiling at her briefly, ‘though how I shall fare hereafter I cannot tell.’
They walked on quietly, each busy with her own thoughts.
‘We will walk every evening,’ Ariadne decided. ‘’Tis good to talk to ’ee Suki and I know I can depend upon ’ee not to tell a soul of it.’
So the pattern was set and they walked every evening.
The days passed slowly, for nothing was hurried on this estate. Haymaking was long over, but work in the fields still began at first light because there were cows to milk, pigs to feed, horses to groom, vegetables to tend, and it all had to be done thoroughly. After a while, Suki begged to be allowed to work in the kitchen, when looking after William allowed it, for at least kneading dough with the amiable Mrs Norris gave her something to occupy her time. William grew fatter and more handsome by the day and toddled about with her wherever she went and was admired and petted by everybody on the estate. But there were no letters from Twerton, so the Captain couldn’t have come home yet, and none from London either.
‘I am bored beyond belief,’ Ariadne complained, when they’d been there a month. ‘We might as well be dead and buried here, for all they care.’
‘But we aren’t.’ Suki laughed, tossing William in the air and catching him, while he squealed with delight at such rough play. It had been a long hot day and he’d been too wide awake to settle, so, for once, they’d taken him along with them on their evening stroll. Now having walked as far as they could at a toddler’s stumbling pace they’d stopped for a rest: Ariadne to sit in the dappled shadows of a chestnut tree; Suki to play with her child. She tossed him in the air again. ‘We’m very much alive. Aren’t we, my ’andsome?’
‘How you do love him!’ Ariadne observed.
‘Well o’ course,’ Suki said carelessly. ‘On account of he’m my babba. Aren’t you, my little duck?’
‘But he ain’t, is he?’ Ariadne said, equally carelessly. But then she looked up and caught a glimpse of startled fear in her friend’s eyes, and her own eyes widened as she suddenly saw the implication of what had just been said. ‘Oh, Suki! Is he?’
Suki was alarmed, then ashamed for allowing herself to be caught out so easily, then relieved that it was only Ariadne who would know, because they were so used to confidence now and trusted each other. ‘If I tell ’ee,’ she said, ‘you’ll not breathe a word to a living soul.’
By then, Ariadne was agog for the details. ‘You have my word on’t.’
So the story was told, from Sir George’s assault, which Ariadne greeted with a snort of disgust, followed by peals of delighted laughter when she heard how Suki had dealt with it, and so past the death of that poor little frail baby, whom she had to confess she could barely remember, and then to his funeral, which she remembered uncommon clearly.
‘I might ha’ known it,’ she said, when the tale was finally told. ‘You’ve always seemed a deal too fond of our William for a wet nurse. While as to my father… ’Tis the sort of behaviour I would expect of him, no more nor less. The man is an oaf. When you hit him ’twas richly deserved. Would I could have been there to see it. We heard him roar, as I recall, but took little heed of it, for he roars at everything.’
‘He roared uncommon loud that morning,’ Suki told her, throwing William in the air again.
Ariadne smiled with satisfaction. ‘I’m glad on’t,’ she said. ‘I hope it taught him a lesson, which he sorely needs, although I doubt he will mind it for he’s uncommon settled in his opinions. He regards all women as his property. Shame upon him. We are mere cattle in his eyes, there to be bedded, or bred from, or married off to some repellent friend of his. I’m so glad you hit him.’
