Buccaneer
Page 5
Even as she spoke they both heard the jingle of harness followed a moment later by Wilson’s harsh voice abusing his manservant Bullock for not being ready to help him from the saddle. At the same moment Mary Bullock ran into the room.
“Oh, ma’am, it’s the master; we didn’t see him coming. He’s hours earlier than usual and –”
The thump of boots interrupted her and Wilson lurched into the room, his face streaming with the perspiration that always bothers heavy drinkers, and his eyes bloodshot.
“Ha, Yorke, here to caress your slut, eh? Or should I say my slut?”
He stood a couple of paces inside the door, swaying, looking from Yorke to Aurelia.
“Come, darling, kiss your dutiful husband.”
Aurelia rose from the stool and walked towards him, and as she went to kiss him he slapped her viciously across the face, knocking her down. The violence of the blow and Aurelia’s lightness meant he continued swinging unbalanced and sprawled flat on the floor himself.
Ned ran across the room to Aurelia just as the serving woman was kneeling beside her. The woman was muttering angrily to herself and tugging at something at her waistband, and Ned was appalled to see that she was drawing out a small carving knife.
Hurriedly Ned pressed her hand so that she pushed the knife back out of sight, then they both helped Aurelia to her feet. No sooner had they done that than Ned felt himself flung round by a hand on his shoulder and found himself facing an infuriated Wilson.
“Well, Yorke, cuckolding me in my own house, eh? Well, this time I demand satisfaction. The devil take appointing seconds, so chose your weapons and name a time.”
Ned looked Wilson up and down. The man was swaying like a child’s spinning top in the moments before it toppled. “I would duel only with a gentleman, Wilson, and a sober one at that.”
“Fight, you cowardly cuckolder…cowardly cuckolder,” Wilson repeated drunkenly. “Brave in front of the women, you are, but faced with a real man, you shelter behind their skirts. Now then, sword or pistol? I have a splendid pair of wheel-locks; you can choose which you want and load ’em both. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
His speech was blurred and now almost wheedling, but Ned watched his eyes. They belonged to a man who had been drinking heavily, but they were not the eyes of a drunken man. The eyes of a cunning man, yes; of a man laying a trap.
“Refuse to meet in fair fight, eh? Wait until the island hears about that! Planters don’t like cowards, you know, especially cowards caught in adultery. You don’t think she’s worth you risking your skin, eh?”
He turned to Aurelia. “Well, my dear, perhaps you’ll believe me now. You are a worthless French slut: worthless to me as a wife and worthless to your lover as a mistress. Pardon me, a former mistress.”
Aurelia watched, her eyes frightened and moving back and forth from her husband to Ned, who was trying to keep a watch on the serving woman, half expecting any moment to see a flash of steel.
Ned waited because he knew Wilson was by no means finished. The challenge was only the beginning of whatever idea had formed in that cunning brain, and probably the least important part of it. Ned guessed that if he had accepted, naming a weapon, time and place, Wilson would have found a reason at the last moment why he would not fight. Ned knew nothing of the man’s ability as a swordsman, but he had heard that he was such a bad shot that none of his neighbours who valued their lives would invite him when they went dove shooting. And while he waited for Wilson to reveal himself, he could only hope that Aurelia would guess there was a good reason he did not accept the challenge.
“You’ve got to leave the island, Yorke. You don’t know that yet, do you, but I can tell you that you have. Dishonoured, by God!” He spat the words out, years of hatred spilling from his mouth like vomit.
“Leave the island?” Yorke repeated guilelessly. “Why?”
“Why? You ask why? I can think of three reasons without any effort!”
“What are they?”
“Well, first, you’re an adulterer; you’ve seduced my wife. Then, you’ve refused a challenge.”
“That’s two.”
“That’s enough. Branded a coward and an adulterer – reasons enough, I should have thought.”
Ned shook his head. “They would clear half the planters off this island, yourself among them.”
“I’m no coward!” Wilson bellowed.
“No, but you’re an adulterer!”
“A black wench on a cool afternoon – that makes me an adulterer, does it?” he sneered.
“I’m not your judge, Wilson.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Wilson said, lowering his voice. “I like you, Yorke, even if you are Royalist. I heard news today that you know nothing about, but I’ll help you out. Now, how many men would help a man who has been cuckolding him for months, if not years? Oh, don’t deny it; I’ve known all about it.”
Ned saw the eyes narrowing. Wilson had known nothing, but now he was guessing and guessing accurately, except the word was – admittedly only due to Aurelia’s scruples – not cuckolding.
“Sell me Kingsnorth, Yorke. I’ll give you double what your family paid. Three thousand pounds. The lawyers can draw up the papers this afternoon and we’ll sign ’em tonight.”
So that was it. Wilson might have been drinking, but the rumbullion had not dulled his cunning.
“Kingsnorth is not for sale.”
“Listen, Yorke, sell to me at that price and I’ll never breathe a word that you refused a challenge. You can stay on in the island. Buy a smaller plantation. Buy a house. Live the life of a gentleman without all the worry of being a planter. You can still see Aurelia. Be discreet, but you can call.”
The man was quick and he was clever. Ned realized that Wilson did not know that a letter from his father had, that morning, warned him that the plantation would be sequestrated as soon as Penn arrived. Wilson was trying to secure Kingsnorth now: buying it so that he did not have to take a chance in the lottery of the sequestration. And he could pay with promissory notes, which would have to be cashed in England, but he knew that long before then Yorke would be a Roundhead prisoner, and no doubt the promissory notes would vanish, so that Wilson would have acquired Kingsnorth quite legally, and at no cost.
“You’ll lose it, you know,” Wilson said, and his voice was now that of a man who was almost sober. “Orders from Parliament arrived in the William and Mary. Orders concerning a certain Edward Yorke, younger son of the Earl of Ilex, lately fled to France and whose estates in Kent and Sussex have been sequestrated by Parliament. And…” he said heavily, enjoying what he obviously intended to be the climax, “…and whose estate in Barbados is also forfeit. You own nothing, Yorke, neither you nor your father.”
“Then why do you want to buy Kingsnorth, Walter, if it does not belong to Edouard?” Aurelia asked, her voice quiet and the question spoken in perfect innocence, as though worried on her husband’s behalf.
“Don’t bother yourself with such things, m’dear,” Wilson said heartily. “I just don’t want our friend left penniless. He loses the plantation and the ship, you see. Why, once the governor acts on his orders – which he will do tomorrow, I’m told – Master Edward will be looking for a friendly roof to shelter under. I wish I could offer you hospitality here, but in view of my wife’s French blood, you’ll understand…”
“But Walter,” Aurelia persisted, “if the plantation is being confiscated – or is the word sequestrated? – by the order of Parliament, surely if you buy it, they will take it away from you?”
“No, no, they won’t. Now don’t you bother your pretty head.” He turned to Yorke. “What about it, then? Three thousand pounds for the plantation. I’ll leave you the ship. You can get away in her. Sign the papers today – you go back and get the deeds and we’ll ride into Bridgetown together this
afternoon.”
Ned realized he was nodding his head, not because he was agreeing with the man but because Wilson’s mind had worked just as he had expected. But Wilson misunderstood the nodding for agreement and seized Ned’s right hand and began shaking it vigorously.
“That’s fine, man, and now we’re shaking hands on it! Bravo, you’ve done yourself a good –”
Suddenly Aurelia was tearing their hands apart and, eyes blazing, she was saying to Wilson in a cold, bitter voice: “Not only are you a bully whose only pleasure is whipping his wife, but you are a liar and a thief, and now you plan to be a cheat!”
Ned caught Wilson’s swinging fist with both hands and thrust Aurelia to one side with his body. As soon as she was out of range of the man’s reach, Ned held Wilson’s jerkin and stared into the red-rimmed eyes.
“Whipping?” he whispered, the word choking in his throat.
Wilson’s eyes dropped. “Of course not. She’s hysterical.”
Ned, afraid he would strangle the man as he felt waves of red anger spurting through his body, pushed him away just as Aurelia said calmly, “Yes, whipping me. Every night, when he is sober enough. It’s his only pleasure. His black woman whips him.”
Wilson gave a sudden desperate bellow of pain and collapsed face downward at Ned’s feet, the black wooden handle of a knife sticking out from the fleshy part of his right shoulder.
The serving woman, Mary Bullock, was standing behind where he had been. Now she had her arms crossed and a grim look on her face. “I did that orl wrong,” she said angrily, “’is ’eart, if ’e’s got one, is on the uvver side, ain’t it?”
By now Wilson was roaring with pain and surprise and Ned knelt beside him. “Keep still. Don’t turn over.”
He tore away the jerkin and saw the knife blade, narrow and obviously short, had sunk into muscle: the woman would have been hard put to pick another place where the blade would have done so little damage.
“Get some clean cloth and some water,” Ned told her. “I can pull it out without harm.”
“Not me, sir,” the woman said. “You pull it out and I’ll stick it back in again! Many’s the night my husband and I ’ave ’eard ’im whipping the lady. Why, he’s such an ’ard cruel man I’ve carried that knife since I first come ’ere.”
Wilson groaned. “Someone fetch the surgeon! I’m dying while you fools gossip!”
“You’re not dying; you’re barely scratched,” Yorke said quietly. “But seeing the knife gives me an idea. No one knows you came back early…”
Aurelia looked down at him, horror-stricken, and Ned slowly winked.
“…we could do the job properly, bury you at the other end of the estate as soon as it’s dark, and sail in the Griffin tomorrow.”
“No, no, you’d never do that,” Wilson gasped. “Listen,” he pleaded, “I’ll see the governor; I’ve influence with him and the Assembly. I’m sure I could get the sequestration order overlooked. How about that, Edward?”
Mary, who still had not moved, said firmly: “Either he’s dead or my husband and I are quit of this island by sundown.” With that she left the room, to return a few moments later holding an even larger knife, and Ned knew she had no fear about using it.
“We have reached an impasse, Wilson. You have a knife sticking in your back which I can remove with no trouble to me and very little pain to you. But that leaves us with a wounded Walter Wilson who in an hour will be full of rumbullion and bellowing for vengeance.”
“No, no really. It’s not painful. If you’ll just remove it, I promise I will say nothing as long as you promise not to repeat anything you’ve heard or said this afternoon.”
Ned looked again at the wound. The man was flabby and the blade had gone through an inch of fat before entering the muscle. There was very little bleeding.
He looked at the two women and gave another deliberate wink.
“I’ll be honest with you, Wilson. If you move, you might cut some vital organ. So you must lie still while we prepare your bed and have everything ready for removing the knife.”
“But a surgeon…it’s a job for a surgeon!”
“Where is the surgeon? Be sensible! McFarlane will be blind drunk by now, and he lives down by South Point, beyond Christchurch. That’s ten miles at least. Twenty miles of riding. He’ll be in a sorry state by the time he gets here. However, you choose.”
“Very well, you remove it, but for God’s sake be careful!”
“I will,” Ned said, standing up and gesturing to the two women to follow him out of the room.
He went out through the front door and kept on walking until the three of them were thirty yards from the house, and he saw Mary’s husband hurrying to join them. He decided to wait for him, to avoid saying everything twice.
As soon as Ned had described the fracas which had led to Mary sticking the kitchen knife in Wilson’s back, the man looked at his wife in amazement and to Ned’s surprise seized her and gave her a smacking kiss. “Killed him, did yer, lass? Oh, Mary, I’m so proud!”
“Nay, I got mixed up on which side his ’eart is.”
The man’s face fell. “Then he’s still alive in there?”
Ned interrupted. “Don’t worry about him. The position at this moment is simple. If the four of us, you and your wife, Mrs Wilson and myself, don’t get off this island tonight, we’ll have a hue and cry raised against us.”
Aurelia held his arm desperately. “Edouard, I can’t leave him – he’s my husband!”
“If you don’t leave ’im,” Mary said harshly, “’e’ll kill yer with all that whippin’ and punchin’, quite apart from ’im raisin’ a hue and cry. Once he’s done that he’s got all yer money, this plantation – and Mr Yorke’s Kingsnorth. Not bad, for the price of a jab from a kitchen knife. Damnation, Alfred, I wish I’d remembered about the ’eart.”
“Is Mrs Bullock correct, Edouard?” Aurelia asked. “About the hue and cry?”
Ned nodded. “The way things are in this island at the moment, I think he could and will rouse out the Provost Marshal, for the reasons Mary has just said. He could have us all swinging from gibbets by the day after tomorrow.”
“But –”
“You are not staying,” Ned said firmly, “even if I have to kidnap you.”
“You won’t have to kidnap me, sir,” Mary said cheerfully, “and I’d be obliged if Alfred could come.”
“But what do we do now?” Aurelia asked tearfully.
Ned asked Bullock: “Do you have friends among the other servants – one or two men you can really trust?”
“Yes, sir. Several. Most of them hate Mr Wilson almost as much as we do.”
“Very well. In a few moments I shall go in and remove that knife and bandage the wound and put him to bed. I shall then tie him to the bedposts. He’ll come to no harm.”
He looked at Aurelia, expecting protests, but she was leaning on Mary for support and seemed relieved to find the woman was so calm.
“I want one of your friends to look in on him every hour or so, and give him a drink of water and some food – but not to untie him. The man should wear very old clothes, a mask, and put his hair in a cloth bag, so Mr Wilson will never recognize him.
“Then tomorrow morning at sunrise I want someone to hear Mr Wilson’s shouts – he’ll be in full cry, you can be sure of that. The alarm can be then raised with the Provost Marshal, but not before sunrise. Can you arrange all that while I’m seeing to the wound?”
Bullock nodded. “I’ve just the man in mind, sir. And no one will hear Mr Wilson’s shouts before sunrise tomorrow. Here, though –” the man grabbed Ned’s arm. “Suppose visitors come?”
Ned cursed himself for not thinking of that.
“Tell them Mr Wilson is down in Bridgetown. That he left an hour earlier.”
“A solid bed,” he commented to Wilson. “But don’t struggle too much because you might make the wound bleed. I am not going to gag you, but if you shout your throat will be cut. I have arranged that. And to prove the point, a man will visit you every hour. If you are being quiet he will give you food and drink. If you are being a naughty boy, he will cut your throat. And if you have been good, he will raise the alarm on your behalf at sunrise.”
“But listen, Yorke,” Wilson snarled, “you will be caught: the Provost Marshal will raise a hue and cry. You, Aurelia and those two scoundrels of servants…why, think of the scandal!”
“The only scandal will be what you create yourself,” Ned said quietly. “Now, are you comfortable?”
Wilson refused to answer and Ned shrugged his shoulders. “Then it remains only to bid you farewell. And as the days and weeks and months, and perhaps years go by, just remember, Wilson: all your eggs are in one basket. The moment Cromwell goes, you are finished. And any day I might return secretly to the island and pay you a visit…”
Chapter Four
Saxby was standing at the bottom of the double stone staircases which led up to the front door of the house like a scorpion’s claw when the two horses came to a stop, lathered and blowing hard after a long gallop. As soon as he recognized Aurelia he ran to help her slide from the horse while Ned jumped down and lifted Bullock’s wife to the ground. Bullock was no horseman. Ned had the feeling that his wife Mary sitting behind him, arms round his waist, had kept them from falling off by sheer strength of character.
Aurelia was quietly sobbing and Yorke gestured to one of the servants to lead her into the house. As soon as Saxby had given the reins of the horse to a groom who had come running from the stables, Yorke asked: “How goes the loading of the Griffin?”