The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  You fear, thought Will, with cold contempt, but you will go; and if the thing flares up, you’ll shuck the blame, as always.

  “I would ask you only, sir,” he said, “not to release them ’ere you go. For the sake of discipline, if nothing else. Men perceive the Scotch have chosen Midshipman Shilling as a target, and men take sides. There will even be some wagers. There will be provocations, deliberate attempts. I ask you, sir, if you must go away, to keep them locked below.”

  “I am going,” Kaye said, harshly, “and the men will be released. If there is trouble, you and Holt must look to it. If there is mayhem, it will be your fault. Go fetch Holt to me; he is taking too much time. I’ll have those shackles off without delay.”

  There was something in his manner, though, that Bentley found suspicious — a sudden lightness in his face, a quirk of humour. Indeed, when he had told his friend the news, and the two of them faced Kaye once more, they found the case had changed: but for the better or for worse they could not tell. When the captain set out later, he took Coxswain Sankey and his usual boat’s crew, but minus three. Their places at the oars were taken by the Lamont brothers, and Kaye told his two lieutenants he would return that night, at whatever length of time this final task should take.

  “We sail tomorrow,” he said, loud enough for men around to hear, and for the news to race around the ship like wildfire. “We sail tomorrow when our complement is full.”

  Sam and Will did not try to still the buzz and babble as the gig was pulled away upriver. They noted that the Lamonts — men of commerce, factors, gentlemen, whatever they might be — were definitely seamen also, who could pull an expert oar. They hoped and prayed that they would run the moment their bare feet should touch the shore, the way that seamen do, pressed ones especially. At the very least, they told themselves, it would prove to Richard Kaye that he was mad.

  But Will was on the quarterdeck when the gig returned, and three of the oars were still manned by the silent, straw-haired brothers. There were other forms in the boat, two bound and gagged, and on the bottomboards, bulky and folded awkwardly, was a very large man, his head completely buried in a sack. He was unconscious, unconscious drunk it would appear, and he reeked of shit and liquor. Tom Tilley and Tom Hugg, when roused out (it being three hours of the morning), had to rig a tackle, so heavy and unwieldy was he, but they were laughing when they laid him on the deck. Will knew the man as well, despite the covered head, and Kaye’s look of triumph made his stomach chill.

  Poor Jack Gunning, in a golden coat with vomit trimmings. Master before and owner, now merely master, and in the drink again. Kaye said to Bentley, brusquely, before going to his bed: “Those Scotchmen, Bentley, are the men for me, the men indeed.

  “We are sailing on the morning tide.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Laetitia Maybold, much as her husband feared her, was a woman with a sense of humour, it appeared. When she saw the state the poor, fat man was in, she laughed. It was, true, not a pleasant laugh — harsh and brief and like a corncrake’s cry — and her lips, rather than smiling, were locked into a sneer. He stood there, crouched to hide his shame, and his florid face went white, then glared and glowed brick red. The brocade tunic was too short to cover him, and his flabby legs were pallid in the tallow glow.

  “Sir Peter,” said his wife, “you are a buffoon, sir, and an adulterer. This is your latest whore, I see. She is too good for you.”

  The two armed footmen, torn between duty and pleasure at the spectacle, turned eyes to Deb. On one face was clear regret that she was fully clothed. A juicy harlot with her clothes still on was unlooked for disappointment.

  “No!” said Sir Peter, in a strangled voice. “Not latest, this is the only — this woman is the first! It is misunderstanding, dearest! It is…”

  Deb almost laughed herself at this. He stood there, like a padded pudding, with a dripping withered thing between his legs, a pathetically meagre puddle on the floor in front of him, and claimed misunderstanding. It would not have took Judge Jeffreys to hang him, certainly, she thought. Laetitia did not laugh again, however.

  “You. Whore,” she said, “what say you to this? Will you tell me you don’t know this man, you have never seen his face… and parts… before? Go on, tell me that. I will believe you, that is a pledge. Go on, harlot. Say it.”

  “My dearest — ”

  “Shut mouth, you!”

  “My dear Laetitia — ”

  Laetitia Maybold stalked across the floor (with careful feet), and slapped her husband on the face, a ringing, stinging blow. He raised his hands, remembered, dropped them down in front of him. Laetitia was smiling: a smile of satisfied derision.

  “Oh go and get your clothes on, you fat fool,” she said. “You are a steer, a gelding, half a man. And you, you trollop. Have you a cloak? A nightgown? While my husband hides the flabby German sausage thing, you may gather your essentials. You will not be coming back here. Have you boots?”

  Deb looked to Sir Peter, without much hope, but he was on the move, a rapid shuffling towards the smaller room. She turned to face the gentlewoman, and her eyes were calm. Her heart, however, was hammering like horses’ hooves.

  “But I am going nowhere, madam,” she said. She was aware, on sudden, of her accent, and she was ashamed. Laetitia’s voice was like cut glass. She glanced at the two footmen, who were stolid now again. Maybe their accents were country also, Deb thought inconsequentially, although a different part of country from her own. The lady’s gaze was level on her face.

  “Oh, but you are,” she said. “You are a whore without a home. Do you plan to sleep beneath the stars tonight?”

  Where is Mrs Collins, thought Deb. And then she knew. Mistress Collins would have more sense than putting in appearances.

  “I live here,” she said, her stomach as hollow as the words. “The rent is paid.”

  “By my husband. Yes indeed. And he has stopped. Do you have another source of income?”

  Her sarcasm was withering. But Deborah fought to retain her temper and her dignity.

  “I have done nothing with your husband, Mistress Maybold,” she said. “That is the simple truth. You have no cause of jealousy.”

  The woman paled, and Deb realised she had made a signal error.

  “You slut,” she said. “I’ll slice your eyelids off. How dare you use that word! Jealous? Of you? You think I want the fat and useless eunuch? Of course I do not! You think that you might have him? You are a filthy little whore, a slut, a tart, a cesshole of disease! In case he’s ever touched your parts, he shall no more come near me. Not ever. That is my jealousy, harlot! You are nothing, and he is less!”

  Her fury had brought Maybold back, and for a short while he was inclined to remonstrate, or maybe plead. His wife, though, was beside herself; she was incensed, a performance new to Deb but which he recognised too well. The servants too, apparently, for they took it very calmly, seemed almost in a small ennui while Mistress M played out her rant. The upshot, though, was that Deborah must come with them, to be locked up in their house or stable until such time as Maybold would dispose of her. Her panic at this word did not last long, as she noted that the footmen treated it with indifference. When she dared to ask why she could not just be let go free, Laetitia was contemptuous.

  “Why, you ask? Why should I answer, I reply. But I will, as you are too stupid to understand. This house, this whole estate, is owned by one who knows us. My husband is his friend, he tells me. His people know the story, they know your face, they will have mocked these most ridiculous cavortings. And you think I’ll leave you hereabouts, do you, to keep the merriment alive? To let them gaze upon your painted cheeks, and marvel? To let you seduce the common menfolk and make mock of me and mine? Seduce his lordship, even? Oh that would be most prime, I do believe. You stay, and swive, and end up as the mistress here? You’re mad, you slut! We leave here instantly! You will not return!”

  Deb considered shedding her own tears, breaking down and s
creaming. Indeed, she felt she was quite near it. But something in this young woman — not many years her senior, if further gone in hardness — something in her face and manner made her fearful. There was something taut and brittle, dangerous. Deb felt keenly that if anyone were mad, it were not she, but more likely Mistress Maybold. And she thought she’d better play along, be emollient, and wait and see.

  Sir Peter, though, had moved into a different mode. Fully dressed and still pathetic, he now was pleading, with tears standing in his eyes. He stood in front of Laetitia, not close enough for easy striking, and was imploring her belief in him. It was love he felt, he told her, and it was love for her alone. This crazed liaison (Deb, presumably) was a way of getting women’s intercourse, meaning conversation, nothing else, without imposing on his dear wife, who found him overbearing, he would concede. He was begging her, he said (indeed he was; he was almost on his knees), to believe this was a mad mistake, a venture into territory he had never trod before, and never would again if she, Laetitia, could just this once forgive him. Then he looked at Deb Tomelty, full in the face, and swore he had never touched her parts, not even kissed her lips, and had not realised she would be a fount of all manner of disease and filthiness. Then he was on his knees, fully on them, and forcing sobs out from between his hands. His wife, Deb noted, looked as revolted as she felt herself.

  Revolted by her husband, but not moved to pity for the girl. With a signal to the gunmen she swept out and down the stairs, followed by Sir Peter, who neither looked at Deb nor made a sound. Deb made a sound, a sort of strangled cry, put out a hand, then dropped it to her side and closed her mind and heart. She was pushed and hustled down to the front, where a carriage was already moving off along the drive. At head a muffled driver, at tail a muffled guard, and its windows tightly curtained. For her and her gentlemen escorters, there was a pony-trap. One drove, one sat opposite Deborah, facing forward, his pistol on his knee. She, facing back, caught sight of Mrs Collins at the cottage door as they whisked away. Neither woman waved or made acknowledgement of the betrayal.

  Laetitia, as well as being bold and resolute, was a dissembler, it soon appeared. Deb had thought she was to be taken to the Maybold dwelling to await her fate, but quite soon she realised this was not so, for they were heading in the wrong direction. They hugged the river, true, but the village character of the settlements they passed gave way gradually to an area more populous and filthy. Sweet smells of field and animal manure were overlaid with acrid fumes of smoke and furnaces, and they passed a group of brick kilns whose lowering gases, for five whole minutes, almost choked them. Then clumps of masts, black against the sky along the river banks, became more thick and frequent, which meant that they were on their way to London. They were on their way to London’s land of docks.

  Her guard, who seemed a pleasant man enough, was not forthcoming for some little while about their destination, or her fate. At last, though, with a hungry look that Deb was tuned by all her recent past to recognise, he made a gambit. Subtle at first, but — when she pretended she did not get his drift — rapidly more crude. She was going, he implied, to face an awful fate, but there might just be a way to make it easier. What sort of fate, Deb wondered, could be worse then rutting with this pock-marked oaf and his companion in some grubby ale-house bedroom or a ditch, then being used, no doubt, as concubine or earning whore? Finally, she asked that very question, couched in a different way.

  “Where are you taking me?” she said. “That lady said I was going to Sir Peter’s house. She thought I would be an embarrassment, is all. What do you say will come to me of harm?”

  Her captor scratched his temple with his pistol-barrel. He had a smile on that was more a smirk.

  “Laetitia is a liar,” he said. “She would accept my offer, though, if I was rich. I ain’t, but I’m richer than you, my maid. I keeps my bargains, too, not like her. Try it with me. I can give pleasure, in spite my pocky phiz. You can come and live with me. There ain’t no missus in the way. She died last Michaelmas. Not of the pox, neither.”

  “I’m almost tempted,” replied Deb, with polite sarcasm. “And what of your companion, on the box? Is he part of the bedding offer, or is he to remain my carriage driver, now you’ve made me up to be a lady?”

  He made a gesture with the pistol, obscene and graphic.

  “He has no taste for maids,” he said. “That’s why the master keeps him, for looking after madam. He makes a fortune that way, with the bribes he gets by sneaking suitors in, and master’s none the wiser, fat old fool. So you’d just have me. What say you?”

  The trap was in the dockland outskirts well and truly now. They were dim and dirty, and looked deadly dangerous. Deb wondered if these “guards” would throw her off to face her fate if she refused the offer, but guessed Laetitia would be expecting proof the mission was accomplished, whatever it should be. This man would use her first, then do his mistress’s bidding afterwards, most like.

  “Tell me the alternative,” she said. “What has the mistress got in mind for me? Are we going to a ship?”

  He looked slightly shaken, then he laughed; and she knew. Her mind was filled with memories of Marcus Dennett, the man who’d brought her down from North to South, the man who had ruined Cecily, the man Will Bentley had shot through the neck. He had made his money in many ways, all unsavoury. When possible, he had sold young maidens into servitude in the Thirteen Colonies. He had spirited them away.

  “You’re too sharp for me,” said Pock-face, with another laugh. “You’ll have a knife under that skirt, I reckon, and if I tried to force the issue you’d cut my yard off, wouldn’t you? Aye, that’s it, med, you’re going as a five-year passenger to Americkee, two birds with one stone for the mistress, see, she gets rid of you for good an’all, and gets paid into the bargain. She’s an ever-open ’ole where money’s in the question. Well; most things, come to that!”

  Quite calmly, Deb thought things over. She had talked about this business with Marcus Dennett, her first procurer, and she knew she could, with luck, come out well from it. She’d be indentured to a farmer or plantation man, and then she’d have her freedom (again, with luck.) Some women were abused, raped, murdered, died of disease or destitution; but others fell upon their feet. There was a shortage of white servants in the colonies, and a shortage of white wives and mothers ditto. Planters needed to rear up sons and heirs just like anyone, and the slaves and native redmen were mere savages, not breeding stock to found an English dynasty.

  “You couldn’t take me off even if I said yes, you silly devil, could you?” Deb said merrily. “You’ve got to take back money to Mistress Maybold, money or proof. Which part of America am I sailing to? What do they grow there? How long’s it take?”

  The guard was charmed by her good humour, which Deb hoped would stand her in good stead when he sorted the transaction. She did have a knife, the one from Margery, but to use it would probably bring about her death. Tony, she remembered, had predicted Will would end up in “the Americas,” but that was not a thought to take too serious, however much it gave her instant longing. According to Dennett there was a thousand miles of coast there, and England was a pocket handkerchief compared with it. She was unlikely to bump into anyone she knew…

  “What part?” he answered. “That I do not know. What grows there? Money, they used to say, when men believed in faeries and suchlike. How long? Depends on speed and luck. West Indies would be best ’cause there’s a war on, and the packets are fast ships and carry arms, so gossip has it. On the other hand, though, the Carib is alive with French and Spaniards and other foreign rogues, so you might end up a morsel on a plate of frog’s legs or a bit o’ Spanish baggage, take your pick. The captain that has bought you ain’t a bad man, though; we’ve dealt with him before. I’ll have a few words with him, med. Thou art a spunky lass.”

  She was staring at him. He noticed and guffawed.

  “Oh no, not dealt with him for things like this!” he said. “You are the first
one, honest, even the mistress don’t make a habit out of it! But she does a bit of smuggling, which would cause Sir Peter grief, as he’s the top nob among all riding officers, ain’t he? This Captain Harding brings her items in, and takes Sir Peter’s money off of her, a comfortable arrangement. So I could not have had you, lass, and got away with it; you speak quite true. By Christ though, thou wert worth a try, believe me! I wish you luck. I mean it. I wish you God’s own luck.”

  The ship slipped from her berth next morning, pulled out by dockyard boats to take the early tide downriver. It was a pleasant passage west across the ocean, and a quick one. Deb, as the only “passenger” — Captain Harding’s business was done, in the normal way, for much higher yields — was largely left alone, but sadly took aloofness one step too far. Her indifference to the mate’s advances, a young Cornish man called Godfrey, angered him deeply, although he kept it hidden. He it was, when they reached Kingston, who found a buyer for her and sealed her fate.

  He chose a man called Sutton, who had constant trouble with his slaves and servants, and who had two brutal sons. Deb, who could not read, thought she had signed her life away for five years, and that, God knew, was more than long enough. But Godfrey’s plans were other wise, and Captain Harding, when he heard of the transaction, raised eyebrows but remained indifferent. The price agreed was good, to him, so what else mattered?

  EIGHTEEN

  Biter’s trip down London River, and then along the Channel to the Atlantic, was a revelation to Will Bentley, and a holiday. The last time he had sailed this water was in a screaming northerly in an open boat, with his friend Sam Holt unconscious in the bottom and his French saviour, Céline, heading to death or God knew what. This time the sail was easy, fast, and beautiful, with the weather like an aromatic balm. Even the pressed and shackled men snuffed the warm air when released, and forgot their maids and children left alone on shore. They had expected flogging at the very least, but Mad Captain Kaye had apparently forgot all troubles. From a pop-eyed popinjay, they now found him the wonder of the world.