Lady Anne 02 - Revenge of the Barbary Ghost, page 12
***
Darkefell hung back in the shadows, watching Johnny go to work with the others, transferring ankers of gin or rum from the deep hull of a rowboat up the beach to a waiting dray. There was one fellow, a smaller man, who appeared to be in charge, and he directed them all with the wave of his cutlass and gruffly shouted instructions. A second rowboat slid into shore, and he waved some waiting men to pull it higher, and start unloading.
Had the excise men heard of this night’s landing? Would they be raided?
And then it began. The hoot of an owl, a shout, and men came rushing down the cut, and this time, though they looked up and saw the Barbary pirate go into his elaborate act, fear of the “ghost” did nothing to deter the revenue men. But the smuggling gang leader valiantly directed his “army” just as well as any military man. He sent the strongest, stoutest fellows into pitched battle, and they wielded their weapons, mostly just cudgels and poles.
And Johnny Quintrell was in the middle of it all! No cudgel would protect him from an excise officer’s musket. Darkefell would not let poor Joseph lose his only consolation in life, his son, not if he could do a single thing about it!
Shouts, and turmoil, guns flashing, explosions rocketing around them from the Barbary Ghost, presumably, for that specter was clearly visible at times, and at others concealed by smoke and bursts of fire, a cannon shot from a lugger out at sea: it all contributed to the tumult on the wet sand. Darkefell darted through the crowd, sliding on seaweed, choking on smoke from the gunpowder, buffeted and bashed by the men scrambling with the ankers over their shoulders. The huge draft horse whinnied and reared at the commotion, the dray toppling sideways in the gloom. A man cried out in pain, perhaps hit by a musket ball or the slashing hooves of the terrified beast. Every time the flash of gunpowder lit the air, Darkefell used the light to find his way.
And there was Johnny, standing like a perfect target among the seething crowd, his expression one of petrified indecision. Darkefell dashed to him and seized him, but the boy struggled and cried out.
“Shut up,” Darkefell growled in his ear, “and come with me to safety. I’ll not let you die, Johnny; I’m your friend, whether you want one or not.”
“Milord,” the young fellow whispered. “What’s a’goin’ on? We was supposed to be safe tonight, perfectly safe. An’ … an’ I saw some feller—I think it were Mr. Puddicombe up on the rise—an’ he was shootin’ at the ghost. Why was he shootin’ at the ghost? I don’t understand.”
“Never mind any of that,” grunted Darkefell. “Let’s get you out of here!”
After that the boy didn’t struggle and followed eagerly enough, shedding the ankers of liquid strapped to his bulky shoulders. Not willing to implicate the inhabitants of Cliff House, Darkefell pulled the younger man away, up the cut, in the shadowed lip of the cliff, and away from the St. James house, but it plagued him; how did whoever performed the Barbary Ghost stunt manage to do so from so close to the home, unless … was it with the knowledge of the owners, or even Pamela, who rented the house? Was she receiving money to turn a blind eye? It was something he would need to take up with Anne the next day, for he would not allow her to stay in a place of such danger.
***
Anne scurried back from the cliff edge as the firefight broke out. St. James was an experienced military man, and could look after himself, but she had to admit she was frightened. She hoped that St. James, seeing it as a losing battle, would abandon his post. As she retreated, she spotted St. James, without his pirate beard and part of his costume, hunched over and running, tripping and stumbling, toward her.
“Get back to the house and go upstairs,” he grunted, gasping for breath. “Things have gone badly. Not even my ghost frightened the excise men away this time.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m coming in, in a few minutes; I just want to get … to be sure no one is hurt.”
She guessed that he must know some of the participants, and honored his care for his comrades. “All right,” she said. She had no wish to get a musket ball in her shoulder or any other place, so she went in. She stayed awake a long time, but when she heard someone creeping down the hall and went to see who it was, thinking it was St. James, it was just Pamela.
“What are you doing up, Pam?” Anne asked.
“I woke up; had a bad dream, I think,” she said, one shaky hand to her forehead.
“You look feverish,” Anne said, putting one hand to Pam’s forehead and feeling it damp with perspiration.
“I’m not feeling well. Something awoke me and I couldn’t get back to sleep,” she said. “I was just going down to the kitchen to get a glass of buttermilk from the larder to settle my stomach.”
“Let me get it for you.” Anne was relieved when Pamela agreed with no demur. It must have been the clash below on the beach that awoke her, but Anne did not want Pamela to catch her brother coming in, for she wasn’t completely sure Pam knew about St. James’s nocturnal occupation.
Anne took her friend the buttermilk, then returned to her own room, but even though she wanted to see St. James when he came in, she was exhausted and couldn’t keep her eyes open. She fell fast asleep and didn’t hear another thing.
Nine
Darkefell had successfully returned to the Barbary Ghost Inn with Johnny Quintrell, and sent him to bed, telling him they’d talk in the morning. Osei, who was, of course, awake and waiting in one of their cramped pair of rooms, heard the whole story.
“So the Barbary Ghost made an appearance,” Osei said, as he knelt to help Darkefell off with his boots.
The marquess leaned back on his elbows on the bed, while his secretary pulled on the stubborn footwear. “I begin to wonder how this can happen without the knowledge of Miss Pamela St. James, at the very least.”
“You speculate that the lady may receive some recompense for turning a blind eye to the ghostly ‘haunting’?”
“Perhaps,” Darkefell answered, grimly, removing his jacket and pulling his shirt off over his head. He handed the apparel to Osei and scratched his bare chest, then smoothed the wiry chest hair down. “Or perhaps the brother and sister are even more deeply involved.”
“From what I have heard, in the talk around this inn, nearly everyone in these parts is involved in some way with the smugglers. Farmers will loan horses or equipment, drays, wagons, for if they do not, they will find their barns vandalized or their livestock dead.”
“And many more do it for the goods they may receive as payment,” Darkefell speculated. “What else have you heard? And why do they speak so openly in front of you, when they hush the moment I enter a room?”
The younger man smiled, slyly, an unusual expression for him, solemn as he usually was. “These people at the inn may have the impression that I, a simple savage, do not understand them, or perhaps that my faculties are not … acute.”
Darkefell grinned and pulled off his breeches, tossing them to his secretary. “You, my friend, are a trickster, a Loki, a mountebank!”
“I take exception to that characterization, my lord,” Osei said, returning to his customary gravity, and presenting his employer with a nightshirt. “I have had to become many things since coming to this country, some of them not natural to me, but I am not responsible if people make assumptions without reference to reality.”
“The person responsible for the Barbary Ghost would agree with you, for once you see beyond the frightening appearance, it really is just a magician’s trickery you witness. What else have you heard?”
Osei sat, while Darkefell performed his evening ablutions, and talked. The suspected smuggler was a local man, Micklethwaite, and he owned not one, but two ships, a lugger and a cutter. He kept them both busy and professed to be a legitimate importer of goods from the Low Countries: cheese, lace, fabric, chocolate, coffee and other goods, upon which he paid the excise. No tampering with goods, either by using false-bottomed barrels or dried-out tobacco, had tainted his day-to-day performance as a shipper.
Some shippers attempted to avoid paying excise taxes by using specially constructed barrels with false bottoms; while the top contents were merely water for sailors, sections at the side were illegally shipped brandy. Or they dried the tobacco they carried, which meant that the tax they paid was on a lighter weight. When the tobacco was sold, though, it was rehydrated to give a higher weight. It was a game with ever-changing rules. However, cheating the taxation officers with such ruses was a different and less dangerous game than evading tax by smuggling goods.
So Micklethwaite had avoided any taint of cheating so far, but it was becoming more widely suspected that he smuggled. He transported goods from Ireland with his smaller ship, it was claimed, and occasionally hired out his services to ferry furnishings or other items, but there was a lot of time between legitimate shipments. That was when he apparently plied his smuggling trade, accepting, it was suspected, loads of goods from larger Dutch and French ships, which he would then sell or trade to English buyers. He was either, Osei said, extraordinarily lucky in never being caught, despite gossip about his role in the trade, or he was paying the right people to turn a blind eye.
“Including the local excise officer, Puddicombe? I’ve heard the man complaining loudly that the crown has not seen fit to give him aid from the Light Dragoons at St. Ives, those gallants so ably represented by that lot at the regimental assembly the other night.”
“However,” Osei said, leaning forward, lamplight gleaming in his spectacles, “Mr. Puddicombe was offered some men by the last colonel of the Light Dragoons, but he took offense, saying he and his local fellows could do the job better than any vain captain.”
“Interesting.” Darkefell then told Osei about his evening’s adventures and his rescue of young Johnny Quintrell. “I’ll speak to him in the morning and try to get him to see it would be better to help the crown than end up in a pitched battle with the excise men, and have his life’s blood drain onto the sand. As much as we suspected Puddicombe of complicity in the free trade, I would not guess that from last night. Unless I am mistaken, that represented a new fervor in the revenue men’s attempts to shut down the St. Wyllow smuggling gang. Why now? Why is he trying so hard to catch them now, when at least two other times he and his men were forced back by nothing more than smoke and gunpowder?”
“That, indeed, is the question, my lord.”
***
Mary, appearing to feel much better, awoke Anne the next morning to tell her that Mrs. Quintrell had come back with no prompting, and so breakfast was ready. As Anne descended the creaky stairs, the scents of laundry and soup and beeswax polish indicated that cleaning and food preparation were indeed going on. Pamela was already in the dining room, but not eating. She stood at a window and gazed out.
“How are you this morning?” Anne asked, going to her friend.
Pam merely shrugged. Anne gently brushed away a trace of cobweb clinging to her friend’s hair. Lynn Quintrell’s housemaid duties were certainly not performed with any degree of enthusiasm or ability! The home was getting dirtier by the day. Even though she had filled in for the absent Lynn Quintrell the day before, Pamela’s lady’s maid, Alice, a local girl, didn’t seem to do her job properly either, for Anne rarely saw her.
Mary claimed the young maid didn’t seem to know the proper way to do anything, apart from the rudiments of hairstyling. Sewing, millinery, spot removal: all were mysteries to Alice. But then, Pamela likely could not afford better on her limited income. Incompetent help was better than no help at all. “Are you recovered from your poor health yesterday?” Anne asked, watching Pamela.
“I’m fine, really, Anne,” she said, with a slight smile on her perfect bow lips.
Anne took some of the eggs that sat on a sideboard, but looked askance at the other items, some of them unidentifiable blackish lumps. Mrs. Quintrell might be back, but she was in no good mood, if the state of her cooking was any evidence. “Where is St. James?”
“I haven’t seen him this morning; I suppose he’s gone back to his regiment,” Pam said, with a frown.
Anne felt a momentary qualm. Perhaps he had gone back to his regiment early, but why? The easiest way to find out would be to see if his horse was still in the small stable just beyond the house and outbuildings. She could hardly eat breakfast, she was so anxious. Since Pamela employed no groom and kept no carriage, the stable was usually empty. St. James looked after his own horse when he was there, feeding and grooming Pilot, as the gelding was named.
She slipped from the house out the front door, followed the crushed stone path around it to the stable, a rickety, leaning building—the stable was in worse shape than the other outbuildings—and tried the door. It was unlocked. She pushed it open, the creak of the hinges shuddering through her ears, and found what she did not want to find. Pilot huffed and stamped, and anxiously looked over the low stall wall at her in the gloom, rolling his eyes.
Anne swallowed hard, her stomach churning. This did not necessarily mean a thing, she thought. Not a thing! St. James was not the most responsible of fellows, and he may have gone for a walk without feeding his horse or tending him. She returned to the house and sent Robbie down to the stable to do what was necessary for the poor animal, feeding, watering, grooming and turning him out into the tiny enclosure next to the stable. The boy was excited about being given such an important chore. “Just be careful of his hooves, Robbie,” Anne warned. “He’s a well-trained fellow, but a fidgety boy might unnerve him.”
She retreated to her room to ready herself for the day, and since she had no secrets from Mary, told her everything that had occurred the night before.
“Fancy the captain being the ghost all along!” the maid marveled, coiling Anne’s long hair into an acceptable style for day. “Never would I have thought of it!”
“But where is he now?” She twisted her head, looking at her reflection in the wavery glass of the mirror, and nodded. When one was not a beauty, it simplified things; tidiness and economy of time were the two guiding principles of her daily regimen. “That’ll do,” she said, about the style. “At least you’ve tamed it. In this dampness, it wants to frizz and puff out into a cloud of hair.” She rose and sighed. “Marcus didn’t sleep in his room, Mary, I checked on my way back up. Lynn Quintrell is still helping her mother in the kitchen, doing dishes and pans, I suppose, from Lolly’s meal last night, so she’s not been upstairs to make up the beds, and his has not been disturbed.” Anne paced and then stopped to gaze out the window toward the cliff. “He was going back to make sure the others were safe, I think. But what others? Who, in particular, was he concerned about?”
“I dinna know, milady. But the captain can take care o’ himself, I’m sure.”
“Something was different last night from what I witnessed before. Seeing the Barbary Ghost impeded the excise officers little. They came better prepared for a fight. I need to find out what has gone on in past months. I hope to heaven St. James is just out walking after a sleepless night.”
But waiting patiently for something to happen, or for Marcus to show up, or for the tide to retreat so she could go down to the water, was not in her character. Instead, she thought of easing her curiosity on some other points. For weeks, she had heard strange noises at night, some from the attic, some from the lower levels of the house. The attic, she had discovered early, was just a storage spot, and the noises must have been from rats or other small animals sheltering from the wind or rain. Perhaps the noises from the cellar were animals too, but she did wonder how large an animal would make a noise in the cellar loud enough to drift all the way up to her second-floor room.
She was going to find out if there was any way into the house through the cellar that did not involve the main level of the house, she decided. And perhaps Marcus was down there, working on one of his mechanical toys, projects she had known to consume hours of his time in years gone by, without him being aware that people were waiting for him.
She hoped that was the solution, as she slipped through the kitchen while Mrs. Quintrell was in the crude cold pantry, and found the basement steps on the other side of a plank door. She quietly pulled the cellar door closed behind her, and crept down the stairs, appreciating the weak light from the candle she had thought to bring.
The basement was a warren of room after room after room, and it took her a few minutes to figure out where she was. The foundation was old stone and crumbling in some spots, dirt tumbling in through cracks. She walked through the whole string of rooms immediately one after the other and saw nothing but crates, barrels, and shelves of jarred preserves. Cobwebs stuck to her hair and clung to her dress as she poked her nose into corners.
But eventually she found a door she had not yet opened. Perhaps it led to the outside.
She held up her candle and examined the latch. It was shiny, without the patina of age or any rust from the damp sea air, but it had no padlock. She lifted the latch and pushed open the door; no creak or whine gave away its movement. Holding the candle up, she stepped into the room, some kind of work space.
It was, unlike the rest of the dusty stone-foundation cellar, immaculately tidy. A bench lined one wall, and under it were kegs. Anne frowned. This space had the definite mark of St. James; he was much neater in his habits and more organized than his sister. He had for years amused himself with clockwork automatons, card tricks and magician’s illusions (a fact that should have made her twig to the identity of the Barbary Ghost) as well as the more serious branches of scientific study, and wherever they lived, he had a workshop. Above the bench were shelves with tools neatly stowed and a row of small pottery globes with neat cork stoppers, as well as small wooden casks labeled “potassium nitrate” and various other elements in Marcus’s neat script.
She set the candle on a nearby barrel and looked around, wondering why the workshop was in a secret part of the house. In the past he had demanded large windows and bright light for his work space. Then she glanced down at the keg; printed on it in stenciled letters was the word “gunpowder.” Hastily, she snatched her candle up and backed away. So that was why he had this hidden; this room was the center of his Barbary Ghost fireworks illusions.
