“And the bastard’ll be dead,” Cashman said, half to himself, as if the end result had just occurred to him; beginning to beam as if he had just discovered the joy of it.
“That’s the point … ain’t it,” Lewrie maliciously grinned.
“Don’t know,” Cashman said, sighing and reaching for the fresh bottle for a refill, shaking his head like a disappointed tot, denied a “surprise” from town by a thoughtless daddy. “Doesn’t seem enough, somehow. Not by half, it don’t.”
“Well, you could have him raped by a cart horse, first,” Lewrie suggested, throwing his hands aloft and sinking back in his chair. “My God, Kit, what is enough? Besides your honour, your good name, reasonable profit from your properties, and public acquittal, that is?”
“I dunno,” Christopher said with a semi-drunk shrug. “Pillage his lands, burn his house down … poison his wells and livestock? An end to the whole Beauman line … his sister Lucy, excepted.”
“Aye, spare the whores and the simple,” Lewrie sneered. “They, at least, have their uses.”
“Run his slaves off to the Maroons in the mountains?” Cashman fantasised, blood and thunder and gore a’bubble behind his eyes.
“Spare me a half-dozen strong’uns when you do, Kit. I’m sorely in need of hands,” Lewrie suggested. “Hell’s Bells, even if they’re nought but simple-minded soldiers, I’d gladly take some of your wharf rats when your regiment gets broken up. Need fresh Marines, too …”
“They’ll parcel ‘em out to t’other under-strength units—oh,” Cashman said, perking up like a wakened cat, and sitting more upright, almost managing to resemble “sober.” His phyz became suffused by a grin, one of the sly sort, filled with impish mischief, slowly, like a high-latitude sunrise. He peered at Lewrie, then winked!
“What?” Lewrie demanded, perked to the edge of his own chair.
“How many Marines did you say you were short, Alan?” Cashman enquired, with a soft, smugly satisfied chuckle.
“We could use five,” Lewrie told him, delighted at the offer he thought was coming. Not that he’d relish gaining hands from a friend’s misfortune, but neither was he loath to refuse soon-to-be unemployed volunteers. Not when he’d considered stopping American merchant ships once back at sea, and press-ganging anyone who had even a slight English accent or the slightest error in his citizenship certificate; and God knew three-quarters of those were bogus, or given (or sold!) by an American consul like so many cough lozenges.
“I’ll have a word with the best men I have,” Cashman promised.
“Hallelujah!”
“There’s still some have a taste for soldierin’,” Cashman said, tittering with impending glee, “or so calf-headed I can talk ’em into it. But, Alan … but!”
“But, mine arse,” Lewrie quipped. “What? Tell me, you sot!”
“You don’t mind Black sailors, do you, Alan?”
“Not a bit. Already have some. Think I always have had, every ship I’ve ever served. They’re good hands, too, so … no, it don’t signify if they were Eskimos,” Lewrie assured him. “Your slaves?”
“How many d’ye think you’d need, then?” Cashman asked, avoiding the query, though hugging his sides in a tittering fit.
“A round dozen’d suit,” Lewrie allowed. “Make landsmen of ’em, for pulley-hauley chores. Some young‘uns might make topmen, sooner or later. And damme,” Lewrie began to enthuse, “I’d kill for just one older one who knows how to cook decent for an hundred or so. Would it be too much to ask, for one of ’em t’be a cook?”
“Oh, I think we can arrange that,” Cashman promised, becoming even more mystifying.
“You’re not askin’ me to buy your slaves, are you, Kit?” Lewrie asked, growing wary of a sudden. “Damme if I’m that keen on slavery, after all you told me, and damned if I can afford ’em, not even at a shilling to the pound, so …”
“Not mine, Alan old son. And free … scot-free.”
“Whose, then?” Lewrie said with a chary scowl.
“Ledyard Beauman’s,” Cashman hooted, slapping the desktop.
“Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie exclaimed in wonder.
“It’d be sweet, wouldn’t it?” Cashman managed to say, just about wheezing with mirth by then. “Sweet revenge, for one. You sail out to Portland Bight, soon some dark night, and abscond with some of his slaves. Young‘uns, like you said, so they haven’t been branded or had their backs whip-scarred yet, so who’s t’say whose they are, once on your ship? I know some Black freedmen who can get to ’em and promise ’em they’ll be free, if they ship with you. What d’ye say?”
Lewrie fell back into his chair, astounded by the idea, giving the proposition a hard think, beginning to chew a thumbnail. Taking slaves, liberating slaves, was just about the worst crime in the West Indies, right up there with horse theft, and a hanging offence.
Damme, but I do need ’em hellish-bad, he thought.
But the risk of getting caught, and the ramifications, would be equally hellish-bad. He’d be stripped of his command, court-martialed, cashiered, and sent home in disgrace at the very least—sent home to face a termagant wife, disaffected kiddies, and another scandal as bad as this one, with Theoni and his bastard! The Navy was all that he knew, and without a civilian career, he’d be in debtors’ prison before a year was out, he just knew it.
Before that, though, there’d be the civil courts here on Jamaica that would most-like “scrag” him by the neck, so why worry about infamy in England?
“Sooner or later, someone’d talk, Kit,” Lewrie schemed. “Sass from a slave who didn’t get to go … damme, don’t ya think they’d miss ’em? Raise the hue and cry, remember there was a frigate offshore the night they scarpered, and put two and two together?”
“Ledyard, none of the Beaumans, would know one of their slaves by sight ‘less they were house servants,” Cashman said dismissively of his qualms. “No brands, no worries. First off, they’d hunt ’em northward, if they thought they’d run off to join the Maroons. And you can depend on me t‘plant that rumour … even offer t’lead the hunt!”
“But later …”
“I’ll be sellin’ up anyway,” Cashman went on, “puttin’ my own slaves on the block, so who’s t‘say I didn’t sell you some o’ mine … with a certified bill of sale t‘prove it? Or manumitted ’em before ya lured ‘em aboard? We can forge some papers, give ’em other names …”
Like father, like son, Lewrie thought, recalling Sir Hugo’s doings back when he’d “press-ganged” him into the Navy, so he could get his paws on the supposed inheritance from Granny Lewrie way off in Devon—because he’d needed the money “hellish-bad” to clear his debts before he lost his St. James’s Square house and got slung into prison himself! His father had ended up running to Oporto in Portugal after his scheme had gone “belly-up.”
Lisbon’s nice and cheap, Lewrie speculated; if all else fails. A rogue on the run could live well, there. Wine’s good … hmmm.
“I’ll even throw in a cook, from my own stock,” Cashman cooed.
“Well, if we sent ship’s boats inshore on a moonless night and kept Proteus hull-down …” Lewrie muttered. “Hellish row, though. Like a cutting-out expedition? I’d never be able t‘let ’em take shore liberty with the other hands, though.”
“Do ye think they’d want t‘run the risk any more than you, hey? Those you get, the ones I said I sold, could’ve been sold to a trader from the Bahamas who took ’em away, so your name never appears in it. What d’ye say, Alan?”
“You know I’d have to sail off to Hell and gone, right after,” Lewrie pointed out. “I wouldn’t be here to second you when you duel Ledyard. Reprovisioned, I’d be gone for four or five months at the least, do I not run out of hands for prize crews.”
“Right, so I kill him first, then we steal his slaves,” Cashman merrily suggested. “It’d make sense that they’d run, with him dead and no wife or heirs t‘take ’em over, and God knows where they’d get
sold after.”
“I’d be in port ’til you and he get retired, then you duel him, then we steal his slaves?” Lewrie scoffed. “Captain Sir Edward bloody Charles won’t let me linger a minute more than necessary.”
“So I get someone else t‘be my second, I s’pose,” Cashman decided, disappointed. “Wanted you there, t‘savour the moment, if for no other reason, but perhaps it’s best you were gone when it happens. Less way t’link your name, the slaves’ disappearance, and all.”
“Hmmm …” Lewrie gnawed a cuticle more deeply, giving it another hard think. Perhaps it would be best, he thought, to be well to windward when the shit started flying. He and his clerk, Padgett, could do up freedmens’ papers for his new “volunteers” … .
And it would be a grand jape on that ass Ledyard Beauman.
“What are the dues, d’ye think … to join the Slavery Abolition Society?” he said, offering his hand across the desk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Hoy, the boats!” Lieutenant Langlie hissed into the darkness, as HMS Proteus fretfully rocked and rolled on the scend, three miles off Portland Point.
“Blackbirds,” Cox’n Andrews hooted back, and everyone gathered on the gangway let out a huge sigh of relief. Moments later the boats were thudding against the hull, and people were scampering up the man-ropes and boarding-battens, eyes and teeth gleaming in wonder and delight, reflecting the single lanthorn they’d dared display.
There were only eleven of them, ten youngsters and one thicker, older man with grizzled grey hair. They came with small packs of possessions bound up in cast-off pillowcases or shirts; barefoot, wearing ragged nankeen or sailcloth trousers worn gauzy-thin by work, loose and ending above the knees; topped with shapeless, stained pullover shirts without collars, just neck-holes, and equally frayed.
For a long moment, they just stood in stupefied wonder, taking in the height of the masts, the guns, the mazes of rigging, and most of all, the sea of white faces confronting them; shying into a tight group, elbow to elbow, as if this suddenly seemed like a bad idea and the price of freedom too high.
“Sure, and I hope one o’ ye knows how t’cook!” Landsman Furfy cried, breaking their stricken tableau.
“Ah does,” the older man said. “Gideon’s me name.”
“Welcome aboard then, mate!” Furfy gushed, stepping forward to take him by the hand and pump it energetically. “Shoulda seen what we been doin’ with good rations, it’d sicken a goat!”
“You boys come on, now,” Morley, one of the Black seamen, urged, stepping forward and waving to the other half-dozen fellow Blacks among the crew to join him, making the newcomers nervously grin. “Don’t be standin’ round. Cap‘um wants ya t’see th’ Surgeon’s Mates, get bathed, an’ into new clothes. Make yer marks an’ sign ship’s books?”
“Cold rations a‘waitin’,” another promised, “then a bit o’ kip in yer new hammocks. Last ‘all-night-in’ ye’ll have.”
“Who de cap’um?” one of the newcomers asked, peering about.
“Him, dere … Cap’um Lewrie,” Morley pointed out.
Lewrie had thought it best to turn out in his newest uniform to welcome them aboard, to impress them from the first. He stood apart on the quarterdeck, hands behind his back.
The youngster came toward him, eyes alight as if he’d seen Jesus, and fell to his knees at his feet. “T’ankee, massa, t’ankee!”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lewrie muttered, wondering again if this was a bad idea, himself. “Don’t do that. Get up, man. I’m not your ‘massa,’ I don’t own you.”
No, the Navy does, and if that ain’t a sort o’ slavery, I’ll eat me hat, Lewrie had to think as he helped the youngster up.
“What’s your name, young’un?”
“Calls me Cambridge, sah. Cambridge is all.”
“Your mother’s choice?” Lewrie asked. “Or your master’s?”
“Nossah,” the teenager shyly grinned. “Mama call me Noble.”
“Noble you’ll be, then.”
“Noble Lah … Lewrie?” he carefully pronounced.
“God, no!” Lewrie had to bark in amusement. “I’m in enough of a stink with my wife already. Uhm … Noble … Hood. Hood’s a great admiral in the Navy, a knacky fighting man. Noble Hood.”
“Yassuh, Noble Hood,” the boy happily agreed.
“We’ll let you choose new names, all of you,” Lewrie told them in a louder voice. “Names that’ll never fetch your old master’s suspicion. Once on ship’s books, with papers showing you as free men, you won’t have to fear being taken. So think it over whilst you see the Surgeon’s Mates, Mister Hodson and Mister Durant. Then we’ll fit up the wash-deck pump …”
That idea seemed to make them shy back together.
“All sailors do it when they sign aboard a new ship,” Lewrie explained patiently. “Wash off the shore stinks and … get baptised in salt water, like a church baptism, when babies get named,” he extemporised quickly.
“Don’t nobody baptise us, sah,” the older man, Gideon, said in a jocular tone. “Dot fo’ white folks.”
“Then it’s about time, ain’t it, sir?” Lewrie quipped.
“Did they not church you?” Mr. Winwood asked of a sudden, coming forward and sounding indignant. “Did they not tell you of being washed in the blood of the Lamb, of being good Christians?”
“Preach at us, now an’ then, sah,” one told him. “Dey say dot we arter be good Christians, but …”
“Baptism and a washing, then,” Winwood enthused, clapping his hands at the prospect, “to cleanse your souls as you take your free names … to wash slavery from you forever, and baptise you as sailors, the finest calling in the world. Recall …’twas sailors that Jesus first made his disciples, simple fishermen and sailors. Let me, sir?” he almost pled, turning to Lewrie. “I’ll attend to it.”
“It appears I’ve gained sailors, and you, converts, sir,” Lewrie chuckled.
“Pray God, sir, that I have … souls delivered up to the Lord.”
“I’ll leave you to it, Mister Winwood. Soon as you may. We’re almost on a lee shore, and need to get out to sea before dawn, before they clap us all in prison.”
“My word on’t, Captain Lewrie,” Winwood fervently assured him.
“Mister Langlie? Run the ship’s boats round astern. We’ll tow them ‘til after Dawn Quarters,” Lewrie ordered. “Let’s get way on her and make an offing … Sou’east-by-East, for now.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Langlie replied, still looking worried.
Lewrie clapped his hands behind his back once more and paced to the railing overlooking the waist, feeling like breaking out into jigdancing; it had worked, they had pulled it off, and (hopefully!) no one was the wiser! He saw Andrews and the last of the boat crews climbing up to the deck, and went forward to speak to him.
“How did it go, Andrews?”
“Lawd o’ Mercy, sah,” Andrews answered, shaking his head sadly, “I’d forgot how evil dey treat people. Warn’t one o’ dot Mista Ledyard Beauman’s big plantin’s, just a drunk overseer t’watch ’em, so I think we got away clean, but you never see such mis‘ry. Mamas an’ papas come down to de boats t‘see ’em away, sah … weepin’ and whimp’rin’ like dey never see dey children again. But soft, so’z nobody’d hear. Blessin’ us fo’ gettin’ ’em free, no matter what de cost, ‘coz de sea can’t be no worse’n bein’ field hands dey whole lives. Tellin’ ’em, ‘Don’t worry ’bout us, we’ll lie good,’ an’ swearin’ nobody’ll talk true. Dey pick names outen a hat fo’ de ones t‘come away with us, sah. I tell ’em … dey be earnin’ money good as a white sailor, maybe dey come back some day an’ buy dey brother’s or sister’s freedom, too, buy dey mamas and papas out. You an’ me know dey most-like can’t, but … slaves live on hopes, like waitin’ fo’ de Second Comin’.”
“‘Next year in Jerusalem,’” Lewrie muttered. To Andrews’s puzzled look, he explained, “What the Jews say, for better times coming.”
“Yessah,” Andrews replied with a shrug. “Good.”
Langlie had gotten Proteus moving, at last, the steady Nor‘east Trades now coming up her stern as he directed the crew to wear her off the wind, before rounding up on larboard tack to the Sou’east.
“Somethin’ odd ashore, though, sah,” Andrews continued.
“Someone see you?” Lewrie almost blanched in alarm.
“Nossah, some thing,” Andrews said, sending a premonitory shiver up Lewrie’s back. “Ya know dey’s seals in dese waters, sah. Dey’s been hunted almos’ out, but dey’s some still about?”
“Seals?” Lewrie exclaimed, feeling fit to burst with fey dread of the old pagan cess that seemed to follow him, from HMS Jester to a new frigate, a benign and benevolent sea god’s “protection.”
“Dey started barkin’ and splashin’, an’ I thought ever’body was gonna die o’ fright ’til we saw what dey was, sah.” Andrews chuckled. “Swam out with us, dey did, rollin’ an’ snortin’ so close, dey made it hard t’keep de stroke fo’ de oarsmen. Leadin’ us, sah, out to de deep water. Stayed with us almos’ right to de side, sah, den disappeared.”
Lewrie dashed to the landward, the larboard side, to peer out almost anxiously for a glimpse of them, but the night was black and the sea was ebon, with only tropic starlight to gleam off whitecaps and horses as the deep ocean waves met the shore, and the rebounding echoes of those that had crashed on the beaches hours before.
There! he thought, espying a misplaced whitecap between wavetops in a trough, the faintest, quickest glimpse of a head, a flash of eyes, as briefly chatoyant as a cat’s from the single burning lanthorn, lambent and large approving sea-hound’s eyes … .
Then the apparition was gone as if it had never been, as if he had wished it to be, leaving him grinning when he should have been deflated with disappointment and dread of his crime.
“Damme, if I don’t feel we’ve done something right, tonight,” Lewrie said. “Even was it wrong.”
Sea of Grey Page 35
