The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  The quarter they were lodged in was pretty low, and she was glad when they told her she must come in off the street, and not be taken for a whore in search of business. Sam offered her a drink, which was only wine, but all they had. Bridie declined it and all three sat, suddenly uncomfortable.

  “Well?” said Will. “Mistress Connor, please. Please tell me everything you know. But Deb is safe?”

  “And so she is,” said Bridie. “As safe as madcap girls will ever be. She run off from the savage camp before the last raid and that is just in time an’ all, before heading west, and she is with a Coromantin maid called Mildred, who is what the slaves do call a santapee, a sort of holy terror. And sir. She do say she loves you.”

  Will swallowed, wishing he had not drunk the wine. He felt dizzy, almost sick, and he imagined it was happiness, or relief. He felt elated, and relieved of a great burden, and really rather sick.

  Holt said, “Christ, William. Cannot say fairer, in my book. That is a news to hear indeed.”

  Will nodded, still speechless, and Bridie added, carefully: “She did not dare to say that in so many words, sir, and did not wish that I should say it, neither, for fear it was not welcome, I believe. But I said I would say it, if she willed or no, and she did not give me nay. She is a dear girl, sir, cailín deas.”

  Will said: “If you see her again, you must tell her – you must tell her that I love her too. I can’t dissemble, in all honesty. I hope I do not speak too fresh?”

  “It’s good to hear a class man speak at all, God love you, sir; and talk love-talk, an’ all. The bastards that I work for are mere animals. Worse than the lowest spailpín, and they’re the masters.”

  “But will you?” said William. “See her again? Where is she, can I go to her myself? God, but I’d…”

  He faltered, embarrassed. But Bridie’s face held no contumely. A little sorrow, though, and regret.

  “I have to tell you, sir, that cannot be. They are heading westward, perhaps for the Cock Pits, maybe beyond. They know there is to be another hunt, all the blacks know that, and this one has the Sutton men an’ all. They are the danger, not the Siddlehams. To Sutton men, manhunts are meat and drink.”

  “But the Siddlehams rate them as fools,” Sam said. “They plan to buy them out soon, don’t they, Will? They say they’re damn near bankrupt.”

  Bridie laughed sharply, but with no great humour.

  “D’anam don diabhal, sirs! Sure, and so they would! ’Tis them is near the edge, not old Alf. Leastways, that is the feeling here. All airs and graces, but no bottom to them.” She smiled. “I doubt my mastermen are short of money, though. They dinnot spend it, that is for definite.”

  Will was impatient with such gossip, and his expression showed it.

  “But will she get away?” he said. “I mean, as far as can be guessed? This Coromant, this – Mildred, was it? – why is she with Deb? Why are they going, how are they friends? Please tell me all you can, mistress.”

  “They worked for Sutton and his son was killed; not Seth, the idiot called Ammon. They were not friends then – Mildred is not friendly in the normal way – but it seems it’s different now. Deb helped the black folk. She risked herself for them. She tried to save one slave man’s life.”

  Will looked at her. His face was racked.

  “Excuse me,” he asked, almost painfully. “There is another man. Called… They killed him in the first raid, and now his… head… has gone. ’Twas said that he and Deborah… I…”

  Her eyes were calm and level.

  “They called him Captain Jacob,” she said. “Yes, it is all known. Alf Sutton’s slave men say it is a fantasy, Jacob was a Maroon, more like to be hunting Sutton’s runaways and Deb than helping them. The runaways are broken now, no danger if they ever were. The Maroon men are separate, and from the east. They are Blue Mountain men.”

  “So Deb and this Maroon man… ’twas said that…”

  The grey eyes hardened.

  “Deb said she loved you, Mister, is not that enough? Whatever pretext they are giving for a second raid, or to hunt her down, is just a pretext, all a fantasy. She is innocent, as all the others in her camp. They are runaways, indeed, but that has always suited planters has it not? They sell good vegetables and fruits and honey, they put food on masters’ tables that the slaves would not grow for them even if they could, because they hate them, rightly so. They will seek and try to kill her, and her friends, and they are innocent. And Deb loves you, sir, Maroon men notwithstanding. Let that be enough.”

  She had talked herself to anger. Her nostrils flared.

  “They killed another girl I knew,” she said. “A girl called Mabel, and her little baby son. Not just her son, but Alf’s or Seth’s or crazy Ammon’s, what we call a bakra-pikni, and no one knows his father except that he was white. They are bedlam, sir, the whole damn boiling lot of them, they need to rot in Hell! You talk to me of Deb and Jacob, and I do not know or care! She loves you, sir, and that should be enough! And the lunatics are after her again, and God knows they should be stopped, for she is innocent. That will not happen, though, for there is nobody that can. So Mildred hopes they’ll make it to Marlowe’s country, where they might be safe. Och ochone, ochone… Truly, sirs, it makes one… oh, God, desolate.”

  Will would have liked to know who Marlowe was, but he did not ask. Instead he said, “I truly thank you for your help, Mistress, it has been… a balm to me, I promise you. And if by any chance you do hear more… or if by any chance you can bring word of me to her… Well, these are our lodgings, you will find us here. Our gratitude would be enormous.”

  “I know it, sir. I am rather coarse, as your kind goes, but in this you have my understanding. Ach, I have said that very bad. Sir – both of you – I will do everything I can. Deb is a most dear cailín, and I pray she will survive. This is a terrible place we’ve come to, sirs. It is as cruel as Connemara.”

  When she had gone they sat and watched their smoky lamp for some long time, and mused, and wondered, and agreed that things were better than they’d been before. Agreed, also, that they must go to see the Siddlehams.

  “We have certain knowledge that this new raid is wrong,” said Will. “Deb is innocent, the runaways are just runaways, not plotting anything at all, it can lead to nothing but more pointless bloodshed. Whoever took that poor man’s head it was not Deb or her ilk. God, I wish that London Jack were here. He might get intelligence, or better still might feed some sense to them.”

  They did go to the big plantation the next morning, but their success was minuscule, or no success at all. Jeremy and Jonathan were too busy fitting out their bloodhounds (and their greenhorn brother) and refused to listen, however hard they pleaded, referring them to their sister “who dabbles in the strategy of things.” Marianne was even less prepared to mind their case, and tried to fend them off with Lucy and Elizabeth, who, she said, would make them lemonade. The nearest they got to the subject was a supercilious explanation that they had been on Jamaica no time at all, and knew little of the island ways. Or nothing, her long nose seemed to emphasise, as she stared coldly down it.

  That very evening, the Siddlehams declared, they would be ready to march into the foothills and wreak their proper vengeance on the blacks. If the white whore was there she would receive comeuppance likewise, and if she and some of them had flown, they would be tracked down to the far ends of the island. Justice was hanging in the balance, Jonathan said grandly, and justice would be done, however long and hard the way to it.

  In the event they left next morning because, apparently, the Sutton men had not turned up until too late. This time the major stealth employed before the previous strike was deemed unnecessary, because they were going as a throng. If the quarries flew, singly or in numbers, they would be hunted down. The pole left bare by Jacob’s stolen head – and other poles set up and waiting – would not be naked long.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Black Bob’s life, after his release by Holt
and Bosun Taylor, had been an overwhelming joy. The five men who had been waiting for him were not of his tribe, but they were from the Bight, and their language shared roots with his own tongue. They all, as former slaves, had also been forced by their masters to adopt a form of English, and this he understood almost to perfection.

  Bob’s wild elation when he rushed up to them was what overcame the men’s suspicion. They were of the band that had killed and mutilated Ayling, Sweeney and McGuigan, and since then had hunted down and killed four others of the Biter’s runaways. The two white men who had brought the boy were armed, although only with a sword and stick that they could see, but might have had bad intentions, as why not indeed? White men were the enemy, and white man’s retribution was swift and cruel and fatal. Ayling and Co had burst upon them with intent – they had assumed – and had paid the bitter price. But Bob’s smile was enough to melt their hearts. Coupled with his escorts’ decision to simply melt away.

  There were no women in this band, but they did not care to use the boy as Kaye had done. They totalled about fourteen and appeared to be nomadic, living in shelters in the woods. It was only after two days that he discovered they had a base in some caves two hours from the Biter beach, and in these caves had captive Englishmen. The first one Bob saw and recognised was a fat man with a limp, who had used to leer at him from time to time on board, but there were four more, tied up in makeshift bonds. When they saw the boy they set up a caterwauling that was full of hope and dread.

  “Bob! Bob!” cried the fat man. “You know me, shipmate! Mickie Carver, the black boy’s friend! I’ve never said a word against you or your people, have I, lad? I’ve give you tidbits off old cookie Geoff! For God’s sake, shipmate, tell them we’re good men, tell them to let us go!”

  The other men joined in, and Bob found their pleading fascinating. These big, bold white men grovelling like swine. Before him, the captain’s toy. Whom they had hunted down, once, and tried to rape and murder. Whom they treated with contempt, and pinched in passing if Kaye was not around. They were calling to him. They were begging, tears were standing in some eyes. Bob’s newfound smile broke out again, like sunshine bursting through a cloud. It seemed that he could choose if they should live or die.

  The chief of the black men, who gloried in the English name of Chattel, stood before him and the frantic sailors and smiled a much easier smile. He and his companions also found it rich and rare to see these big white scoundrels cower before a tiny boy. One word, his smile said plainly, and they taste the sword. Bob was their mascot now, and it would please them to do his bidding. Killing white men was a pleasure anyway. A lesson in reverse that they had learned.

  But Bob could not decide. He looked at Carver, whose name he had never known and never would have done if not for this, and saw just a fat, pathetic, dirty, sweating hulk. He looked at the others – called Chris Thompson, Josh Ward, Seth Pond, Arthur Ebury, again unknown to him – and saw strong bully-men contorted into shapes of terror. In truth, Bob had suffered at the hands of many on board the Biter, most recently Sam Hinxman, on the diving boat. These captured ones, for all he knew, had run from Hinxman and his friends; leastways, they had not been drowning him as Hinxman had, for gold.

  “You want the treasure?” he said to them, out of the blue. They stared at him, entirely bemused. “You want me dive down in sea and get the treasure? You go-long drownding me?”

  “No,” said Carver. He had no idea, perhaps, what Bob was asking, but he was smart enough to know the answer. “No. Eh, mates? No, no, no!”

  There was a chorus of denial, which conjured forth another dazzler from the black boy’s lips. Chattel was frowning though.

  “Treasure?”

  “In sea,” said Bob. “Go make me dive for. Go make me drownd. Blood come from lugs till Mr Bosun bring me run away. Not these men, no, sir, they not there. No want them dead, sir, they good men. They go live.”

  This statement was the sweetest music to the sailors’ ears. They gave a cheer, that set up a shrieking chorus from the wild birds in the forest, and Bob cheered with them, like the simple, happy soul he was. Chattel and his cohorts, sick of butchery perhaps, quickly set the white men free, and gave them drinks of water, and a little food. They had already stripped them of any weapon, however small, and the deserters had discovered, while hiding in the woodlands in the last bad days, just how little chance they had of finding help or habitation. In any way, now they knew what Black Bob was on about, they thought they had a bargain counter. In low and rapid English they conferred, then Carver, their elected spokesman, called a private meeting with Chattel and his deputy to talk about the sunken gold, and to explain how they could be of benefit. It would be mutual, was his line: though possibly, that was not his full intention.

  Strangely, although they were glad enough to go and watch the treasure being lifted by the solitary yawl, Chattel’s band seemed to be little interested in it as a thing of value. They moved down to the waterfront with the greatest ease, by-passing Lieutenant Savary’s outpost men as if they had not existed, which the sailors thought a laugh. Some of them, in fact, discussed how fearsome easy it would be to give the blacks the slip when they were close enough, and go and rejoin the mates whom they had left such few short days before. None of them, save Ebury perhaps, could see a value in this as a proposition, though, fearing that even Dickie at his slackest might have something to say to them if they returned, and might even say it with a cat o’ nine tails. When Ebury, tantalised beyond endurance by the sight of jolly men with bottles, and good meat cooking on a spit, did slip away – unnoticed, as he thought – Chattel’s deputy, a quiet pleasant man called Ledermann, followed after him in utter silence, to return five minutes later with his scalp, which he threw at his companions’ feet. Nobody spoke about it, then or later, but there was no more talk of running, either.

  Although indifferent to ideas of metal wealth, the blacks were much more voluble about the ways of diving to the wreck. Four or five of them had come from holdings in the Gulf of Nicaragua, it transpired – hence the name of Ledermann, perhaps – and they mocked the white men’s inability with increasing scorn. It was obvious even from a distance that no one could stay down half long enough, or go down half far enough, and the blacks became more and more impatient to have a go themselves, to show how it was done. And wouldn’t that have put the cat among the pigeons, as Mick said one night to Thompson back at their makeshift camp. For both had little doubt the blacks would make it down, and up again, if they were to try. It fairly made their mouths water for future possibilities.

  When a ship appeared offshore one day, the white runaways were as excited and afraid as the blacks. When she came to anchor and they recognised Jack Gunning on the quarterdeck, though, and then Lieutenant Bentley, their apprehension and confusion turned to regret, and an aching desire to get back in the stream of actual life. They watched with hangdog looks the comings and goings from ship to stockade and back, they dribbled at the food and wine they guessed must be on board. Chattel could sense this in them, with a kind of pity and mistrust. He and Ledermann herded them far away that night, right back to their hidden caves, and kept them there for two days.

  When they returned to watching at the bay, the tenor of the life had changed. The ship was anchored still, but men were hard at work on her, aloft and alow, and more activity was taking place around the stockade. Their focal point, though, was still the yawl moored out by Biter’s sunken wreck. Subtly it was changing, there was more order, method – and more success. One diver in particular, whom none of them recognised, had the knack, or training, to satisfy their black observers that he was doing right. They made approving noises, and took to holding their own breath when he jumped off the diving boat, and grinned and nodded at how well he did. But they always had breath to spare when he burst to the surface like a rising cork.

  There came a time, though, that the ship was ready, and they watched sails set, the capstan manned, the yards trimmed round to fil
l her canvas and away. The black men were content to stand and watch from the undergrowth, but the former Biter hands were turned to grieving stone. The breeze was light, and the farther out she ghosted, the more lonely was their mood. Bob seemed to understand, and sympathise. But Chattel and Ledermann began to laugh and mock at them.

  The wooden fortress the Navy men had built was an impressive structure now. The walls were higher than a man, with spiky tops, and inside was a second row of sharpened stakes, angled outwards, with longer, keener points that had been fired and blackened into fearsome hardness. There was a square hut in the middle, with musket-ports cut in the walls, and space all round to aim and fire if anyone should break through the defences. The white men were struck once more with a sense of awful loss. With a stockade like this they could have held off an army, and now their captors could, if they should raise the treasure and the Navy should return.

  Around the fire in the secret camp that night, Mick Carver and Chris Thompson tried again to explain to their captors the value of what lay beneath the waves, but Chattel’s stance was finally unshakeable. The band fished and hunted, he explained. They exchanged flesh for vegetables and bread and sweetmeats, they consorted with women in the camps of other runaways and Maroons. What benefits would silver bring? Among blacks they had no need for it, and the whites, it they found out, would merely take it all away. Merely? No – they would kill them all as thieves, he said. Thieves and slavemen who had run away.

  Carver and Thompson, in the quiet of their sleeping spot, agreed that this was all completely true, so they worked out ways of making acquisition seem attractive. Wealth would buy freedom, Carver said next time the subject was brought up, for even white servants on the plantations would hide them out for money, and with the treasure likewise hidden they could bargain the secret of its whereabouts for pledges they’d be free. Thompson, a natural cynic, decided universal guns would be a better draw, and extolled the power they would have if each and every one of them could pour lead out of a musket muzzle, with a brace of pistols to back it up. In a minor way. the black men seemed to take the bait.