Lady Anne 02 - Revenge of the Barbary Ghost, page 19
“Begging your pardon, my lady, but an old blind Jew telling that gentleman anything? P’raps he is a good magistrate, but high in the instep and a hard man. He’d be more likely to spit at me than talk to me.”
Anne bowed her head. Some believed Jews to be liars, others despised them as murderers of Christ. If the magistrate believed either of those things, he would dismiss out of hand any information from Abraham Goldsmith. “Why are you telling me this?”
Abraham Goldsmith stilled. He tapped his walking stick on the ground and said, “There is a rot in this town, people dying who should not die, young men, fathers, providers. I would see it stopped, but a man like me … I must be careful not to bring down anger on my cousin, who has enough difficulty making her living as it is, a Jewess in a small Cornish town, depending upon people’s custom as a seamstress, but you … I knew from the moment we spoke that you had the light in your heart, the brightness that guides a will to do right. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
She stared at him. “That’s from the New Testament!”
“It is.” He grinned, his gnarled hands caressing the top knob of his stick. “In Kent, a very kind—if misguided—Christian lady thought that if I heard ‘the Word,’ I would convert. She talked about someday forming a society for that purpose, the conversion of Jews to Christianity. How could I take offense? It was kindly meant. She was very sincere, and I am not one to turn away kindness, in whatever form I find it.”
Anne bit her lip, then realized she did not have to restrain herself. She chuckled, and it felt good, after so much pain. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, Abraham Goldsmith, for making me smile in the midst of so much woe.” She put one hand over his, over the head of the stick. His joints were knotted with arthritis, and she wondered how much pain it caused him to carve as he did? “Now, do you know anything else you think you should tell me?”
“Yes,” he said, with a sly smile. “Did you know, some of those boys who are hired by Mr. Puddicombe, the prevention man, they swear that some of the explosions that accompany the awful Barbary Ghost appearances come from behind them?”
“Behind them? How could that happen?”
“I would say that not all of them are from the same source.”
Anne pondered. Puddicombe, who was supposed to be paid off for ignoring the St. Wyllow Whips’ smuggling, while arresting others who used the sandy stretch beneath the town or along the nearby shore to land smuggled goods, was pushing Pamela for more; more money and more of herself. Had he decided to get rid of Marcus, who could have been a danger to him? Was he also trying to confuse the raids by setting some of the explosions himself? It would certainly make it easier to explain his decisions to retreat to the higher in command to whom he answered.
The drizzle became more pronounced, and Abraham Goldsmith rose. “I think it is a little wet, my lady, even for me.”
“May I walk you home?” she asked.
He shook his head. “If you have been asking questions about smuggling, you will have enough trouble in this town without being seen as a friend to me and mine. Some would damn you as a heretic, even for that kindness.”
“Mr. Goldsmith, first, I have been very circumspect in my questions. No hint of smuggling has passed my lips. And second, this is not my home and never will be, nor am I in the slightest bit worried about what people will say about me. I recognize the value of my good reputation, but as the years pass, I become more secure in my own judgment, and less likely to let anyone stop me from doing what I think right, and what I think proper, and what I think pleasant. My father says one should never miss any opportunity to combine kindness with friendship. Let me meet your cousin, and see the walking sticks you carve, sir.”
“Your father sounds like a remarkable man, my lady.”
“He is,” Anne said. “He’s wonderful.”
“Lord Darkefell, too, is an unusual man,” the fellow said, as they walked.
“You’ve met him?” Anne said, sharply, wondering at the abrupt change of topic. She had her arm through the elderly fellow’s, but their progress was slow across the slick grass.
“Yes, my lady, I’ve met him. A fine fellow. I did not expect him to speak with me, but he did.”
She smiled. “He’s one of a kind, sir.” She sighed. One of a kind. If she believed that, then perhaps marriage with him would be completely different from any marriage she had ever seen. What would that one-of-a-kind marriage be like?
***
Darkefell had cornered Johnny Quintrell again and asked questions he had never thought to ask before. The Lord Brag Johnny spoke of was a recent incarnation of a smuggling leader, as recent as a year or so ago. The marquess also established, from Johnny, that Captain Micklethwaite lived some distance down the coast, having moved there from a house much closer to St. Wyllow, a house that he still owned.
That abode was Cliff House.
As a misty rain began and all sensible people retreated indoors, Darkefell and Osei went to examine the beach below Cliff House and the cut that divided it from the headland. Though the tide was at low ebb, waves pounded the beach, leaving only a sliver of land to traverse. Darkefell showed Osei where the crevice was in which he and Anne had found the ghost costume.
“But I have heard tell, my lord,” Osei said, talking loudly over the thunder of waves as he took off his rain-spattered spectacles and wiped them with a cloth, “that the coastal cliffs are riddled with caves, and these have been used with good effect by smugglers. Could there be another cave along here, a deeper one, someplace where supplies are kept, or the smuggled goods stored?”
The rain pelted down harder, but Darkefell was in a perfect rage to do his utmost to keep Anne from harm at the hands of the smugglers, the excise man, or whomever else threatened her. He would not trust her to keep herself safe. She seemed intent on proving that a woman could do anything a man could do, and while he was sure that was not so—and he truly hoped someday to be able to show her the things he could do that a woman couldn’t—he would not say that, for to counter her was to enrage her. While not afraid of her fury, angering her needlessly was counterproductive to his ultimate goal, her consent to marry him. He hoped he was wise enough not to cut off his nose to spite his face.
He scanned the cliff side below Cliff House, striding along the hard-packed sand with Osei following. Waves lashed the shore, and he had to skip closer to the cliff to avoid them on occasion. “There,” he pointed, indicating a dark hole in the cliff partly concealed by a rock that jutted out. He scrambled up over the slippery, wet rocks, and Osei followed.
It was a natural cave that first expanded, beyond a narrow cleft, then tapered as it went deep into the rock. The sound of the waves echoed weirdly in the natural cavern, sounding almost like an opera house audience’s applause at times. The light dwindled as he clambered back, but at a certain point, as the cave narrowed, he could see that the walls smoothed and began to show the effects of man, in tool marks and chipping, the flatness of the walls, and the increasing evenness of the floor. “This is the smugglers’ work, mark my word,” Darkefell said, stopping to catch his breath.
“But which smugglers, sir?”
“Good question. This tunnel could be a hundred years old and I would not know it, nor does that matter. I don’t know where it ends, but it would be interesting if it was near Cliff House.” He sighed in frustration. “We didn’t bring a lantern, and it grows dark in this depth.”
“But ahead, sir,” Osei said, squinting into the distance. “I think I can see an end.”
Darkefell moved forward, feeling along the wall as he went. Not twenty feet along he came to an end, with the unexpected finish of a planked doorway. Locked. Securely. From the other side. He put his hand against the door. “I wonder what is on the other side of this door?” He looked over at Osei in the gloom. “I think a lantern and some bolt cutters will tell us, eh?”
The other man’s dark face split in a smile. “Indeed, sir.”
“Later,” Darkefell said. “For now, let us go back to the inn. A storm is approaching, unless I’m mistaken.”
Fifteen
Anne waited at Mrs. Rebecca Miller and Abraham Goldsmith’s home until the rain let up. It was the most relaxed she had felt since coming to Cornwall. In their small home, with the good smells of bread baking, a soup pot bubbling over the fire and Rebecca, a slim, dark-haired woman, sewing by the dim, filtered light of the window, Anne talked with Abraham. He was a fount of knowledge of Hebraic history and lore, one of her father’s interests, so it was more like being home than anywhere she had been in recent weeks. She then admired his canes; he had carved cane heads in the shape of foxes and horses, and had taken much of his inspiration from remembered views of the natural world, from when he had his sight.
He had already begun carving the walking stick for Anne’s father from a lovely piece of alder, and she was able to suggest some other ideas for the carving of Irusan’s shaggy head, taking Abraham’s gnarled hand and illustrating what she meant by moving his fingers over the carving. She promised to go to a jeweler in St. Ives for the emerald chips to place in the eye cavities.
Finally the rain let up just enough for Anne to leave, so, weary from a long day, damp and achy, she walked to the livery stable and Sanderson hitched the horses to the carriage yet again and took her back to Cliff House.
The tension bubbled up within her as she dismounted the carriage, sent Sanderson back to St. Wyllow, and entered the house. Lolly was upstairs in Anne’s sitting room teaching Robbie his letters and numbers, for the boy’s education was woefully inadequate. Mary sat and repaired damage to Anne’s extensive wardrobe. Pamela, as far as anyone knew, was still sleeping.
Anne, unneeded upstairs, descended. She had a lot of thinking to do, for she was deeply troubled by what she had most recently learned, that Pamela’s fiancé was likely murdered, and her own conjecture that it was by the same man who killed Marcus, either Puddicombe or Micklethwaite. She glanced out a window and saw that the rain had stopped, and she badly needed some solitude to think. Mrs. Quintrell, her daughter Lynn and even Alice were making far more noise than any properly trained servant should.
Their slackness and ineptitude would not be borne for one moment in a well-regulated household, however, this household was anything but well regulated. While at first the unruly nature of the household had not bothered Anne in the least, and she had found much entertainment in the squabbles perpetuated by the irascible Mrs. Quintrell (the woman quarreled with the coal man, the butcher and the rag and bone man, among others), she was beginning to be irritated by the Quintrells’ slovenly habits and poor attitude toward their tasks. Servitude was a skill, Anne believed, giving dignity to a servant when they performed the function with ability and a keen eye to perfection. But it was not her household, and not her business to discipline the staff.
Anne escaped through the side door and slipped around to the back terrace hoping for silence, the roar of the ocean and the howl of the wind the only sounds she wished to hear. But as she strolled out to the flagged terrace, she heard voices, and when she turned a corner, saw that Pamela and Captain Micklethwaite were at the edge of the flagstone terrace in deep conversation. Anne’s friend looked poorly, her complexion sallow, her cheeks hollow, and the dark circles under her eyes had become pouches.
Pamela noticed her, and called out, “Anne!” and held out one hand.
Anne approached, and her friend took her hand and tucked it into the crook of her arm, as if she felt the need for solace and support. But her conversation with the captain was apparently amicable. He, a ruddy-faced sailor with a pipe in his hand, eyed Anne, but did not speak.
“Captain Micklethwaite, my friend knows everything,” Pam said, then added, hastily, as the gentleman showed signs of alarm, “but not from me! She guessed much and heard more, and knows all, now. But she would never do a thing to harm me, and I trust her.” Pam turned to Anne. “The captain was just telling me that he has arranged one more large landing. He knows I wish to get out of this difficult business, and has agreed to help me retire from the trade. Lord Brag will have one last hurrah.” The ghost of a smile flicked across her face.
“When?” Anne asked, examining the man, wondering if this fellow had killed both Pam’s fiancé and her brother. If she had suspected that, surely she would not be doing business with him, but for all her worldliness, Pam was sometimes too impetuous and trusting. There was more than one kind of naiveté in the world.
“Not sure what night,” he said.
“We must not trust Puddicombe now, the captain agrees. He has proved to be treacherous. In the past we would have informed him of our plans so that he could ignore our landings, or on occasion appear to try to catch us, only to be turned back by Marcus’s explosive apparition.” Her voice caught when she said her brother’s name.
Anne watched for any sign of consciousness on the captain’s part, but he was solemn and unmoved. And yet … there was something about him that nagged at her, something she felt rather than saw.
“But I’m not using me own boats, Miss St. James.” He glanced at Anne, but continued. “I’ve told all an’ sundry that me two boats is busy with a couple o’ lawful runs to Ireland and up north, an’ I’ve hired a boat from a fellow in Bristol, one ’oo understand the business and can keep his mouth shut. The goods is coming from the low countries, due here in these waters ’bout now. Me friend’s boat is coming down tomorrow, an’ we’ll then figure tides and time, an’ unload.” He clamped his pipe between his teeth and rubbed his hands together.
A few more words were exchanged, then Micklethwaite left.
“Are you sure this is wise, Pam?” Anne said, watching him disappear around the corner of the house. “Men have died. It is a lethal and terrible business you are in.”
“But it is the only way I can earn enough for Edward and I to live in a decent manner. I will not let my boy starve, nor suffer and want in his life!”
“Look,” Anne said, turning to her friend and clutching her shoulders in her hands, “I know how you feel about making your own way, but I would gladly give you enough money, whatever you would make from this landing, to quit now!”
Pam stiffened. “If you do not wish to help, then say so now, Anne, but do not suggest giving me charity another time.” Her pale face was set in a grim expression, and she folded her arms over her chest.
Stymied, Anne gritted her teeth, not sure how to proceed, but knowing that to press harder was to offend Pam deeply. For two close siblings, Pam and Marcus could not have different characters. Though Anne admired Pam’s independence, she would have preferred a touch of the cynical greed that characterized Marcus in his worst moments. She sighed, and capitulated. “You know I’ll help, Pam.”
Pamela, tears in her eyes, smiled through them. “This is to bring me a lot of money, Anne, more than you could possibly give me anyway, even if I were so cowardly and mercenary as to take your excessively kind offer. I know the risks and I’m willing to take them. It is a lot of goods, so much that Micklethwaite suggested, and I agreed, we must use the cave passage.”
“The cave passage? What do you mean?”
“Just you wait until after dinner, and I’ll show you!”
The Quintrells finally departed and dinner—overcooked mutton, again, accompanied by delicious biscuits baked by Lolly—was consumed. Anne waited impatiently until her companion nodded over her stitching in the parlor. The older lady finally excused herself and went up to bed.
Pam and Anne lit lanterns, and Pam led the way downstairs to the cold cellar.
“I’ve been down here, Pam,” Anne said, her voice echoing in the stone cellar. “I found Marcus’s workshop. He has a complete store of gunpowder and fireworks chemicals.”
“You know what he was like,” Pam said, her voice trembling. “He could never resist a magician’s trick, or a sorcerer’s chemistry. Playing at the Barbary Ghost and having a reason to make smoke bombs and fireworks was a joy for him.”
“I certainly didn’t find any tunnel while I explored.”
“Just wait!”
They threaded through the warren of small rooms to what Anne thought must be the very end of the cellar, the last room she had discovered. A dusty old carpet hung against the back wall. Pam pulled it back to reveal a locked door.
She toyed with the padlock and talked nonstop, her nerves clearly stretched almost to breaking. “The authorities are very much up in arms right now. Last month a smuggler’s shallop, the Happy-Go-Lucky, fired on a revenue lugger off the south shore of Cornwall, at Mount’s Bay. The fools!” she cried, clattering the lock, the sound echoing through the confined space. “Firing on the prevention men only made them a target! Most of the crew were taken into custody, to Pendennis Castle, but escaped.”
“Escaped?”
Pam smiled, the expression fleeting across her lips like a shadow. “Oh, I don’t think that is any coincidence, my dear Anne, that so many were able to escape from such a fortress. I’ve told you, bribery infects the highest offices of this land, and the revenue service is especially polluted. At every point in our country where money is collected, the men doing the collecting watch the gold pass through their hands and they become avaricious. Thank goodness, for my sake!” she said, with another brief smile at her friend. “I cannot imagine the escape from Pendennis was effected without some help from men in positions of trust. Cross their palms with silver or gold and you can get anything.”
Anne was silent, wondering what this had to do with anything.
Pam set her lantern aside on a pile of wooden crates, took a key off her chatelaine and put it to the lock. “Anyway, it is my feeling that until they get those scoundrels—the escaped Happy-Go-Lucky crew—the revenue service will not commit a cutter or any sea support to this coast. This last landing should be safe from seafaring intervention. Then I’ll be out of it. We’ve been too busy here, and I feel certain that the excise office will investigate Puddicombe’s failings soon. Micklethwaite can do whatever he wants, find another partner or retire.”
