The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  She was standing facing him, toying with the ribbons at her breast that laced her gown across. She did not seem lascivious, but his mouth went dry, the way she smiled at him so very sad, and sweet.

  “But,” he said. “But maid, how got you here, who brought you? You did not make Sir A?”

  “Hah! No, Tony brought me, whoever else? He brought me with a sack of sovereigns, and dealt with Dr Marigold himself, I guess. Sir Arthur made him swear he would be secret with my whereabouts, and Tony is a man I’d gladly trust, would you? What other steward, I wonder, would have found it such a place and not insisted that he test the bed with me? Or not gone back to his master and said I was a whore again?” She caught the look that slipped across his face. “Will.” She said it earnestly, like a solemn child. “Will, since I’ve come here, I…”

  She stopped, thinking of Wimbarton and all the things she’d had to do with him. She wondered if Will knew, or guessed, and if he’d think it shameful in her, or just a shame. She dropped on to her knees in front of him, and put her arms around his legs, then laid her head upon his thighs. Ten minutes later they were almost naked, Deb in a fine lawn shift, Will in his shirt, when a man opened the door they had not bolted, and entered with a long-nosed pistol. Deb, who knew she’d seen an apparition, locked in fright and could not scream, but croaked. When Will turned, he was looking down the barrel of the gun. It was held by Marcus Dennett.

  *

  There were men abroad for William in the London streets this night, but the mountebank had not been one of them. His target was Deborah, as it had been for a long and weary time, since indeed, he had struck Milady with a cudgel in the face and been shot for it. The ball had caught him at the join of neck and shoulder, and was still inside him somewhere, for it certainly had not come out that he knew of. It must have glanced a bone on going in, considering the pain was so severe and he had bled a deal, but since recovering he’d had no pain. Sometimes, absent-mindedly, he checked his stools, but so far had found no lead.

  In the chaos and confusion after the firing he could have got away with Deborah, a matter that he cursed himself for rather often. But truth to tell he had been badly hurt, and for near an hour afterwards could hardly stand, or talk. Wimbarton had proved himself a man of steel exceeding quickly, and his men had cleared the women out, beating a few to make them hold their tongues about the episode. Milady, when the smoke had cleared, was gone, and Marcus Dennett never saw her on earth again. In later days he feared to go near the Wimbarton estate or household, but he heard that she’d been buried and he wondered how she’d died. The steward Jeremiah, who had conveyed him twenty miles away hand-tied to a horse when he was fit enough to jog, had told him very plainly that he would hang if he was found in the vicinity again, there was a murder warrant out. He should count himself lucky, the ex-soldier added, that Mr Wimbarton had not ordered him to kill him on the spot, which he would have much preferred to do. Then Dennett, penniless despite all he had done for the good magistrate, was cut from off the horse, kicked in the injured shoulder for good measure, and told that he was free to go and starve.

  Without a pretty maid to earn his bread for him, without his wagon home for sleep and shelter, without even a pack of cards to gull the stupid, Dennett fell to brooding and self-pity. He quickly decided that Deborah was to blame for all misfortunes, and further, that she had plotted it beforehand, she had had a scheme. The first long night, freezing in a shallow cave scraped in a rain-soaked banking, furious with hunger, he convinced himself that she would soon become a courtesan to some very wealthy man, she would soon have money of her own, in cartloads. So that was two people had cheated him out of what was rightly his. The difference was that Wimbarton was powerful and dangerous, and Deb a silly little whore. The thoughts of what he’d do to her gave him a meaning and a purpose back again.

  It had been a hard time though, even for a man as strong and single-minded as the mountebank. When he’d risen in the morning to steal his breakfast he had been almost savaged by a farmer’s dogs, in the middle of that day he’d dined on hard bread thrown out by an innkeeper’s wife for her pig, and he’d laid his head at nightfall in a draughty barn with only rats for company. As things got worse his determination that Deb should pay grew stronger. On the third day he was back in Wimbarton’s area, building a shelter in the woods where Sam and Will had come across him first, and at nights began to rob food from lonely cottages that he’d noted long before as dog-free and owned by the old and vulnerable. He frequented roadside alehouses much like a wraith, and heard quite soon that Deb somehow had ended at the local baronet’s, but then back with the justice of the peace. The rumour mill came up with several reasons, which rendered down in Dennett’s mind to this: she was a concubine, possibly a shared one, and the men who used her were both exceeding rich. His maid, his money, his chance to lead a full and happy life. And then he learned she’d disappeared one day, gone northwards, and the steward who had took her had returned alone. To the north was London, there was no other place, it was obvious. Deb was a whore and whores would gravitate, that was their nature, it could not be changed. Whatever else men knew London for, they knew it for its whores.

  He did not relish London, Marcus Dennett, because in parts of it he was known for things he’d done before, well known but not well looked on. Inevitably, these were the parts where Deb would be — indeed he guessed that Dr Marigold’s, from whence he’d torn her off the night poor Cec had died, might be the very place he’d find her — and the chance was high he could be taken by the law, or shot like a dog. He had no doubts, though, that he would hunt her down and claim her, and little fear. He was secret, good, and fast, and if she were to be at Marigold’s, he already knew the ground. He heard the news she’d gone at a public house one night, and by two days later he had burgled his way into a store of cash — not big, but adequate — and tried to steal a horse from the stable of a coaching inn six miles up the high road. He’d failed in that, but got a pistol from a drunken groom, and a good thick coat, for winter was starting to chase off the autumn with a vengeance. For the rest of it he’d walked, and hidden in the daytimes, and asked questions clandestinely when he’d got to town. It had cost him dearly to get into Marigold’s this time, but he’d opened up Deb’s door with utter confidence. Until he’d seen her face above a shoulder, and a naked bum.

  *

  For a long and aching moment, Will Bentley looked at the gaping barrel, bereft of speech. His head was cocked round across his shoulder, and underneath him Deb was rigid as a plank. She was making a noise, a sort of mewing, which he realised was the sound of shock. He could not believe it, either, because the man there was the mountebank, and the mountebank was dead.

  “Then Christ,” said Dennett, voice firm and confident, and not without amusement. “Young Deborah is the queen of harlots, and she’s got a paying guest! Continue, sir, continue. You can give the fee to me!”

  Beneath Will, Deb began to squirm, and he heard a roar of anger rising in her chest. He moved his hand to stop it at her mouth and dropped his head to mutter urgently into her ear. “He does not remember me. Be silent and he may not shoot.” It occurred to him that Dennett could only really see his arse, but he made no move to cover it.

  “This is mortal rude in you,” he said. “Sir, this is not a harlots bedroom, but is fairly rented. Dr Marigold will hold you guilty for this work. His men go armed, you know.”

  Dennett had closed the door when he’d come in, but deftly leaned back and slid the bolt across.

  “She is a harlot and she’s mine,” he said. “You may finish what you came for, sir, then instead of payment you may walk outdoors with us and I will take your horse. Am I not generous? She is a runaway and will be soundly beaten, but in the meantime — Ah, that is the way, Deb, wriggle about a bit, it’s what these gentles like!”

  Deb’s fear had turned to fury, mixed with shame. Underneath Will she writhed and arched, however hard he tried to keep her down in safety. One leg got
free and lashed across the bedside, missing Dennett s pistol by a hair’s-breadth. This enraged him, and from treating it as some sort of bedlam lark, he let out a savage snarl. He lunged towards the bed, grabbing for Deb’s ankle, the pistol in his right hand held above his head. Deb, touched but not caught, rolled herself convulsively away from him, displacing Will from off her, exposing herself quite naked from where her shift was pulled up to the waist. The mountebank, ignoring Will entirely, then leapt for her throat, bringing his gun hand down to clout her across the cheek and temple. As his hand came back for another blow, Will seized his wrist from behind, to be dragged across both Deborah and the mountebank by the unexpected strength with which he twisted his whole body round to face the new attack. Milady’s wound almost unmanned him then, for as he jerked his arm to bring the gun to bear on William, he let out a sharp cry of agony, and his face drained white.

  The barrel was in Wills eyes once more, at a distance of a span or less, and the mountebank, composed of teak and wire, had broken the grip upon his wrist. Will, having no other course, went for the pistol with both hands to push it clear or wrench it free, while Deborah, on her feet now, launched herself across the bed with both fists clenched and struck Dennett on the right side of his head. All three of them, from the momentum, crashed on to the floor, Deb roaring, and William found he had the pistol to himself, held crosswise like an oar-loom, while Deborah clawed at Dennett’s hair and neck. In a second the mountebank was upright, had kicked her in the face with booted foot, and produced a six-inch knife from inside his riding coat. He did not come forward though, but stood and panted as if to get his strength. The gun, now pointing properly, exploded in Will’s hand, and jumped, and jetted smoke and flame and lead at point-blank range, into Dennett’s throat. Will looked at it, ears ringing, finger on the trigger still, for what felt like several seconds, and could not believe. Surely, he had not intended that?

  “He’s dead,” said Deborah. This time there was no doubt of it, his neck and chin were smashed. “Will, you’ve murdered him. Jesus, he would have killed us both.”

  Outside the room, already, there was screaming. Amid the wails the word “murder” recurred, clear and regular. Momentarily, they were both transfixed, Deb’s shift torn, and blood-stained from her mouth, Will panting and struck with horror, in his shirt. Murder. He had shot a man down, almost in cold blood. He had had the gun, the fight was over, he had shot and killed. He heard the feet along the passage, he heard screams.

  “This was not your fault,” Deb shouted at him. “Will! It is not your fault, he had a knife, he would have killed you with the gun! Will! Mr Bentley! Sir!”

  Will shot the bolt back and opened the door before Marigold’s bully-boys had cleared a way along the passage, and he pulled his breeches on, and got his coat in hand. Deb had seized a robe to augment her nakedness, but in the first rush of people, some to gain the room, some to pull them out, the robe was torn away. Will, to his shame, resorted to waving the gun in an aggressive fashion, and it did enable them to force their way along. But down below them in the inner court there was a separate commotion which would prove fatal to their chances of escape. The men abroad in search of William were from the Biter, a minor press-gang all his own, led by men who knew his haunts and predilections. As he and Deb ran out into the night, he came face to face with Jem Taylor, Tom Tilley, and Behar, with about three others moving in the shadows. His gun was empty, theirs were not. But in any case, he could not have used it, under almost any circumstance.

  They saved him from attention of the law, but he had no arguments they’d listen to to let him find his own way back, or deal with Deborah. Some of them were drunk and all of them were wild with joy at his predicament, which in their eyes — not knowing that a man was killed — was merely marvellous. They pushed the whore off, and grabbed and squeezed at her the while, and the more he bellowed at them the more they laughed. Taylor disarmed him casually, Behar tripped him when he tried to run to Deb and help her fight some others off, then, brutally because he was resisting them so fierce, they dragged him through the arch and out into the narrow road that would take them past the Fleet down to the waterfront.

  “Oh sir!” screamed Deb. “Oh sir, oh sir, oh help me!”

  “I will be back, Deb! I will be back! If Sam comes, tell him not to go back down the Adur way, there’s deadly danger!”

  “Now come on, Willie,” boomed John Behar in his ear. “Enough of whoring for a while! Slack Dickie has a crying need of you!”

  “Please God,” yelled Deb, then went into a wilder scream. Will, twisting in his comrades’ grasp, saw the denizens of the gay house flooding round her. One had a cudgel and he took a strike, another went in with his fist raised like a hammer. A murderess, a murderess! He heard the cry.

  His last sight of her was of the maid at bay, head lifted back, hands held out towards the mob like talons, mouth open in a hopeless shout. One breast was visible, the shift was rent, her tormentors saw her as a luscious target. As his own men pushed and dragged him round the corner out of her sight, Will thought his heart and brain would burst. And still they whooped and roared with joy.

  On the row to Deptford, they lashed him to a thwart. Before they’d fully left the staging, he’d tried to jump and swim, to Deborah.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The Biter slipped downriver in the early morning mist on a good breeze, light and cold, from the north-west. William was up on watch in proper naval clothes at last, shaved and washed, but hollow-cheeked from lack of sleep, and anguish. Holt was not on board of course, and he had no belief at all in Kaye’s continuing insistence that he was to meet them in the estuary. How, Will had protested; and Kaye had offered him a flogging for his impertinence. Bentley had come back in ropes, he’d said, and would finish up in shackles in the hold unless he held his tongue. He had deserted, and should thank his lucky stars for tolerance.

  Will had been thrown up on to the deck still lashed, but the idea he’d run had never held much water, try as Kaye might with it. Strangely, the men who’d captured and tormented him changed sides on this, and reported that they’d released him from the clutches of a “tasty, tasty tart,” and that he’d been already dressed — albeit in long-toggy clothes — and ready for the off. There had been some type of rioting apparently, said Taylor, which had made the case exceptionally confused, but Mr Bentley had shown no signs of wanting to desert. The boatswain’s sangfroid and disingenuity were marvellous to behold, but tore Will’s heart. Not only was Deb abandoned, but he’d killed a man like Kaye had done, and would pay as little price. In some ways, to be manacled in the darkness of the hold would have been a kind of blessing.

  Kaye needed him, however, for the coming fight. Will’s dressing down had been in public on the quarterdeck, with the Navy men and Gunning’s preparing Biter for the sea. Savaged, he was sent below to prepare to do his duty, which to begin with was the arming of the company and the readying of the carriage guns. When he emerged to start, Biter was swinging off the wall by action of the wind and tide, aided by dockyarders in two pulling boats and a set of warps at stern. Gunning was sober and superbly competent at con, headsails and fore were backed, then smartly filled, and in five minutes they were into the centre of the running ebb, clearing down the cordage and preparing to set more sail.

  Two hours later, with Lieutenant Kaye below to “rest or sleep” — or “podge it up the neger boy” as Will heard Gunning mutter coarsely to his helmsman — he was standing at the weather rail watching the Essex shore slip by when Kershaw moved to join him from the lee. William, whose torment had been eased by working with the gunner, had fallen back towards despair, so welcomed the distraction. Duty was the whip, the spur, the chain he had been contemplating, and he wondered how one would ever come to terms with it.

  “Mr Kershaw,” he said. “Good morning, sir. Now tell me who you spy for on this day.”

  His bitterness surprised him, as did the question that had slipped out. He had not intended rude
ness. But the necessary apology was stillborn on his lips. Kershaw was not insulted, it appeared. The ghost of amusement curved his lips, but overall his face was calm and sombre.

  “Your friend will not be joining us,” he said. “He is not downriver waiting, that is a lie. We are going to approach a Frenchman that Lieutenant Kaye has intelligence about, off the North Foreland. Sam Holt has been abandoned to his fate.”

  The wind was blowing chill, but still quite light. Will stared across the rain-washed marsh and woods, a featureless and unhuman landscape. Inside him was an awful loneliness.

  “Go on,” he said.

  The thin, stooped man was not shy or crushed today. His swinging moods, the fear and gloom that sometimes overwhelmed him, could hardly have been guessed at.

  “He got a message through,” he said. “Two messages — one for Kaye and a word-of-mouth to me. He gave the time and place the gangs were going to meet and do their Adur run, and said that he would stay there, not return. He gave some indication of the numbers under arms, and warned it would be very stiff and bloody. He said that Kaye should tell you.”

  “How know you this?” A pause. “Are you Kaye’s confidant?”

  “I spy,” said Kershaw, blankly. “That is what you think, so I’ll confirm it. Sometimes I do not know whose side I’m on, is all. Black Bob gave me the writing to his master. He gives me everything of Kaye’s. He hates him.”

  The Biter lurched, as the helmsman pulled her round a point or so nearer the wind to keep the channel. Kershaw’s thin, bony hand touched the rail for balance. The marks of torture were horrible upon it.