The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  Dan Swift took passage along the northern coast, and made terrific time with kindly winds. As he dropped south to double the eastern extremity, the wind hauled from west to north for him, and once round Morant it blew south-easterly. He did not even need a tow to reach the inner harbour, and the wind died as if by magic as he prepared to drop the hook inside the Palisadoes. He had received and answered a salute from the Apostles, and a smart pinnace from the Offices was there to take him off as soon as he desired. Seated in the boat – by kind permission of Captain Shearing, undoubtedly – were the elder Siddlehams, and they were overjoyed to see him. Congratulations were in order, they told him as they climbed on board, great congratulations. Not only for his triumph neither, and the capture of that murdering bloody Marlowe swine – but no, because the title-deeds were drawn and done, and the lawyers ready with their quills. In no time at all or even shorter, he would be the owner of their beautiful fair house and land. They were a band of brothers, veritably.

  Swift, in the face of such bonhomie, responded like a lizard to strong sun. He seized the hand of Jeremy, then Jonathan, and worked them up and down as if they were pump handles. Lieutenant Jackson watched sourly from the pinnace for a good long time, but made his general disaffection quite apparent. At last he suggested that Captain Shearing was a busy man, as doubtless were the members of Assembly who had gathered in the Offices to hear the Captain’s tale. Swift responded sunnily, and within two minutes more was being whisked across the harbour in fine style. He asked after Marlowe (locked in jail, and safe, and comfortless) and hoped that Mather and Captain Kaye had had no trouble on their journey back, no attacks or other unforeseens? But no, said the oldest Siddleham, everything was tiptop, beautiful, no contretemps of any style at all.

  “Except,” he said… And Lieutenant Jackson snorted, as only he could snort.

  They were at the jetty now, and there was no time for elaboration. But Swift learned soon enough that Richard Kaye was the shadow on the sun in fact, and the Siddlehams were hoping he, Dan Swift, would be the cure, and that right fast. After a reception at the Assembly, after formal thanks and congratulations had been passed, they filled in the details as they rode for the plantation. About Kaye he learned the most disturbing circumstance.

  “We wished to bring him home with us,” said Jeremy. “We wished to succour him, to let him get to know the house, it is the place dear Marianne was born in, and died so tragically. But he would not come. He grew… Well, he became abusive. He accused us of all sorts of things.”

  “Things?” said Swift. “Pray, sir, what do you mean by things?”

  They were on horseback, but he caught the glance the brothers exchanged. Jonathan said brutally, “Sir, we must be frank with you. He has took to drink, sir. Kaye is drinking like a nigger or a common seamen. Aye – rum. It is an awful thing.”

  “He has took up with bad company,” added Jeremy. “On the march back he fell in with that rogue Alf Sutton and his son, who filled his mind with stuff and nonsense. Scurrility, Captain. He has become a slave to it.”

  Jonathan said hastily, “But drink’s the worst, sir. It is deplorable. We are concerned, sir, to be frank. Concerned.”

  As was Daniel Swift. So much so that he pulled his mount to a halt, forcing the brothers to wheel back and do the same. Another glance between them, perhaps of some alarm.

  “Where is he then?” said Swift. “I must talk to him. If he does not stay with you, where stays he? Good God, sirs, he is his lordship’s son, the keeper of the wherewithal. What sort of stuff and nonsense? Is it to do with our transaction? Surely not?”

  “Good God, sir, no,” said Jonathan. “Oh no, sir, that could not be. The papers are drawn up. It is but the matter of a signa… Well, sir – we have agreed, though. We shook our hands on it, all three of us. Not so?”

  It was so, and Swift was furiously angry to be so betrayed by Richard Kaye. And angry to be slighted by these mere islanders in the matter of his honour. That they should doubt a gentleman, a man who, unlike themselves, had not left his home and motherland to turn an easy profit in the Indies, was beyond endurance.

  “Where is he, sirs?” he snapped. “I must confer with him immediate. You have my word on it, which is my bond, but I must find him out. Where is the Sutton spread? Will he be there? Or if not, where? This is of the essence, sirs, the utmost urgency.”

  It was as if, for a moment, the brothers did not care to say. Again the looks between them, that struck Swift now as shifty. Which enraged him even more; at Kaye’s behaviour, not theirs. He thrust his hand out suddenly, forcing Jeremy to take and shake it.

  “There, sir! My hand again, if you should dare to doubt me!” He wheeled his mare, presenting next to Jonathan. “An honest man does not backslide,” he said. “Now where is Kaye? Where do the Suttons lurk? When I have settled this, then we do business. And I must say I will not be doubted, sirs. I will not be doubted.”

  The young men were vehement in their denials; he was not doubted, nay, and never could have been. It was just that… well, their concerns for Captain Kaye, their fears as to what the Sutton men might do to him, how warp his understanding. It was their belief, also, that the rogues might have induced him to draw monies out in Kingston, on his own bond or in his father’s name. Each statement fuelled Swift’s concern and anger.

  Likewise their insistence that they did not know Kaye’s whereabouts. He might be at the Suttons’ house, but he was more likely in Port Royal, in the drinking dens. The Suttons took him there, they said, and plied him with raw spirit, and fed him filthy lies. They offered, even, to go down with Swift, to help him seek them out. For they were certain, somehow, that the Suttons, Alf and Seth, were not at home. And that meant, they said, that Kaye would not be, neither.

  There was something in this whole affair that Swift distrusted, but he could not put a finger on the reason. He had watched Kaye on the expedition, and in retrospect recalled he had been drinking publicly, but not to great excess. He recalled better that Kaye had been concerned when he had raised the buying of the plantation, and exhorted that lawyers be engaged before a pen were sharpened or applied. So Swift, while retaining total confidence in his judgement, and the probity of the brothers, decided to do what he did best, in his opinion; which was to find the truth.

  “Sir,” he said, to the older of the two. “Excuse my frankness, there is something I would like to know. Your pater was a baronet, as I believe? Which means, after his sad demise, that his title is now yours. If you should allow me, I would be more than honoured to use you as Sir Jeremy.”

  There was a moment’s pause. Siddleham did not bat an eyelid. A smile grew on his lips, and it was supercilious.

  “Well,” he said. “Captain Swift, I congratulate you on your knowledge of such arcane protocol. Indeed I am Sir Jeremy, except for this: it is a little premature, as we reside so far from London in this benighted place. I hope and imagine that the necessary order is in the mails already; who knows, it may be languishing in a ship not far offshore. Forgive me for my modesty, however. I do not feel it would be seemly, yet, to use the title. Do forgive me, if you will.”

  Swift bowed, and smiled, and rode off on his own. Young Siddleham was indeed a baronet, latest in a line of noble knights. It was all the reassurance he could ever need.

  At the Sutton place he found them right in one thing, but half wrong in another. The Suttons weren’t at home, as was confirmed by a short and stumpy Irish woman who met him at the door, but Post Captain Kaye was. Strangely, though, he could not be spoken to or seen.

  Swift bullied, and he blustered, and he raised his voice enough to raise the dead. Or the dead drunk, as Bridie later told it. When Kaye did appear at last he looked mortal sick, and he clung onto the door-post like grim death. To get sense from him, Swift realised, he would have to load his guns with double shot.

  *

  Deb, for the first time in her life, and certainly the last as she imagined it, became the Captain’s Lady as they v
oyaged back along the coast to Kingston. She lay in Slack Dickie’s bed, at first with Mildred, then alone, and then – the dream impossible come true – with Will. It was not his idea, it filled his mind with fear and scandal until Holt and London Jack beat that out of him with verbal blows of scorn and ridicule, but once achieved it flooded him with a peace and wonder that he felt would never go away. She lay in his arms in linen, and for a long time did not talk, but wept. William did not weep, but he lay and felt her move, and throb, and sob, and now and then he kissed her wet, bruised eyes. He was fully dressed at first, and intended to remain so, but after some few hours Deb turned to him and asked him to undress. When he demurred she did it for him, item for item, garment for garment, half-covered by a sheet. And then she stood beside the bed, and slipped her shift down so she was naked also. She looked ashamed and frightened, not at her nakedness, but at her bruised, cut, bitten skin. She had been bitten on the breasts and stomach, and the marks were cut and blackened, with teeth-shapes in the flesh.

  “I have been used,” she said. “I am so sorry for it, Will. You need not look at me.”

  “I do not look,” said Will, eyes wide open on her. “My eyes are closed. I see nothing that you should be ashamed of, Deb. I love you. Come to our bed and sleep.”

  Deb could not sleep, but could not make love, neither. She tried, she tried hard, she insisted, and Will – though half-ashamed of it – was eager as a pointer on a shoot. And when they did at last, she cried hot tearing sobs, and lay down on her face and he half-covered her, and held her back and neck, and pressed, and stroked, and comforted.

  Before she went to sleep Deb said, “What if I’m pregnant, Will? Oh, what?” And she did not mean with any child of his.

  They had got off the beach in their waiting cutter not long after the Jacqueline had opened fire. The timing – which Gunning claimed merely as fortuitous, a response to all the shots they heard on shore – was perfect in the circumstance. Mr Gunner Henderson had picked up on some musket or pistol flashes and had laid off on them with all his speedy brilliance, and the shots, while striking nothing, had led the prey to think they had been sighted. This led to confusion, if not outright panic, which Imbert added to in terms by ducking round behind the renegades and firing on them from the other side. This led to half of them racing in the wrong direction, releasing shots, and more useful flashes for Henderson to lay and range on. Tom Hugg, another man of great initiative, gave up his headlong clearing run, turned back along the path, and snatched Deb bodily from off her feet and on towards the shore. Bamford and Nuttall, their pistols empty, then rushed ahead and freed and launched the cutter, shipped an oar apiece, and jerked her stern-first outwards when the rest appeared. Hugg deposited the girl in gently, stood by to aid the two lieutenants if need be, then lifted Imbert, the last one to appear, bodily by one upper arm and swung him through the air and lightly inboard. Then he took the stem and shoved the cutter into deeper water like a raging bull, before he jumped on board, balanced on one knee.

  “Hey!” he shouted, in delight. “Hey, Frenchie Amber, you’re the man for me! You little Froggie bastard!” And Imbert, as if to prove it once for all, picked up a loaded musket, stood calmly on the swaying, rocking thwart, and loosed off a shot at the beach-head trees, where Thompson and Josh Ward had just appeared. And disappeared, immediate.

  For the rest of the voyage back to Port Royal, a voyage all too short for Will, the idyll that sustained his spirit waxed and waned. In their times together in the bed – the windows open, the sea sounds and creakings, the shouted orders, muttered conversations on the poop deck overhead – they swooped from joy to great unhappiness. They were in love, they were together, that was reality. He was a Navy officer, she a runaway, a fugitive, a criminal in the island’s eyes – that was also real. Try as they might, dream sometimes as they did, they could not see a future save for misery.

  “I could be hanged,” said Deb at one point. And they knew it to be true. “I killed a man for you in London once,” said William. “For us. Perhaps I will again.” And they knew it to be false.

  Mildred, Will’s friend and confidante by now as well as Deborah’s, was a clear-eyed realist, although not completely without hope.

  “Bridie will help,” she said. “Although she still work for Sutton, I suppose. And you and your friend Sam had lodging in Port Royal. I talk to mistress there she may perteck you, Debbeerah, we give her money in the hand. And fat man Hugg done marry Nellie. Nellie all right, except she try to sell you for a whore, maybe.” She smiled. “Maybe I joking, Debbeerah. You got a knife though, ain’t you? Mr Bentley can give you one.”

  But as they slipped in past the Twelve Apostles, nothing was fixed, except that Deb and Mildred, for the moment, would stay on board. When Captain Kaye came back they would have to see. If he still believed Deb innocent, then he would help, perhaps. Or not. With Kaye, one never, ever knew.

  They knew the people, though, and they knew their story could not be safe and secret long. Gunning anchored in clear water, and forbade the bumboats to come near. For the moment, Deb and Mildred stayed “hidden” in the cabin.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Even assailed with double-shotted cold-eyed rage, Kaye was too drunk to be intimidated. Swift did not threaten physically, he did not move a muscle, but he emanated hatred and contempt for the soft-faced drunkard stood in front of him. And the soft-faced drunkard only blinked, and sniffed, and belched once, and then smiled.

  The theme of Swift’s tirade was duty; Kaye’s duty to his father, friends, his Navy and his King. Duty to the race of white men and their struggle with the blacks. Duty to the promises he’d made, the commitments to his exiled countrymen and the memory of their womenfolk so cruelly butchered. Duty, finally, to his own dear sisters and Mama, who languished back in England with expectations of his conduct far away, and who would die of shame if he dishonoured them.

  At this point Kaye’s blinking grew intense. He blinked, he pushed himself upright, and he took a series of deep breaths, indeed he seemed to sober up. The swaying slowed, then stopped. He farted noisily, then coughed and spat. He licked his lips.

  “You are being gulled, sir,” he said quietly to Captain Swift. “By your noble friends the Siddlehams. They are bankrupt.”

  For an Englishman, Jamaica when the sun is high is not a place to sustain a full-blood quarrel. The air too hot, too sweet, the sky too blue. In his dark coat, tight-cravatted at the collar, Swift found himself on the verge of choking, and had to scrabble at his neck. When he was ready to speak again, Kaye was also much more in control of limbs and gestures. He waited now politely, while Swift sought to regain advantage. But his chin was still unshaven, his eyes still red, his unwigged pate still tufted with untrimmed hair.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” said Swift, at last. “I thought I heard you say… That is an outrage, Captain Kaye.”

  His deflation, though, was so complete that even Slack Dickie knew something must have happened, that doubt had entered into this man’s soul.

  “It is an outrage, Captain Swift,” he said. “But I believe it, sadly, to be true. The estate is bankrupt, in default, in hock, in escrow to the very hilt. The Siddlehams are villains, sir, just like their father was before them. If we had put money in, we would have kissed it all goodbye, the last brass farthing of it. Thank God we did not sign, sir, eh? Thank God for that.”

  Swift stared at him, and he was very pale. But Dick’s troubled mind had wandered off once more.

  “To think she was betrothed to me,” he said, distractedly. “To think I loved her. To think she lied.”

  “How lied?” said Swift. “Did she… but I do not believe you, sir. I cannot.”

  Kaye’s eyes were bloodshot.

  “She boasted sir; she boasted. I hoped she would be part of it, when we wed, we’d be lord and lady of a great estate. She promised, sir, it was a mighty prize.”

  “Who told you this?” asked Swift, savagely. He had got his colour back. He
had crushed his doubts, knew once more that this could not be true. “Who told you? Who gave you all these lies? It is the Suttons, sir, perhaps, who are the villains! Do they wish to sell, mayhap? Is it you their hooks are baited for? They are Yorkshiremen, as I believe! That is, great rogues unhung! They have marked you for a booby, sir. They will strip you down and hang you out to dry.”

  “Nay, they are my friends,” said Kaye. “They have gone to find the Scotchmen. And Black Bob. They have a good intelligence, they have black bloodhounds and good spies. They have gone to bring Black Bob back home to me.”

  *

  Will and Sam, as soon as they stepped onto the quay, learned that Marlowe was not yet hanged, and where to find the jail. Getting in was a bagatelle, as the white men at the gate were indifferent, but inside the heat was magnified by ten and the stink and filth were staggering. They were put in the charge of two black jailers with bunches of enormous keys and lead-loaded clubs, who did not speak, but chewed and spat, and ran with sweat. Ashdown and Tom Hugg went in with the officers, as it was hoped the Irishman could communicate best with Marlowe.

  Whatever they were expecting – Deb had told Will of a “tall, thin shining man with a nose like Caesar’s in the picture”– the sight of the rebel leader was a living shock. Light entered the cell through one high, slit window in a four-foot thick wall, and the stench of crystallised urine was so sharp it made their throats clench up. When Will discerned a person it was more a sort of bundle, angles and arms and legs, all twisted and deformed. It was encased in heavy chain, and the first sign of life was a metallic clink.