by Fiona Monroe
"Good morning, Mr President! I thought it would take a while longer for you to stir yourself this morning. Look here!" He chinked the small leather bag of sovereigns. "We can turn wood into gold after all."
"Glad to hear it. Captain—"
"Half right here, half on delivery of the goods, which we can organise as soon as enough able-bodied men are vertical. We can run the Heron against the quay for unloading—is there a problem, Washington?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. I think we speak in private."
Roderick sighed, though not out loud. He had a nasty suspicion that this was going to turn out to be something to do with the President's maidservant paramour, for the man had a shifty, embarrassed look about him that was unlike his usual bold, cold demeanour. Perhaps the girl had sat on the lap of a local cut-purse and Washington had slain the man in the consequent duel. Perhaps Stirling had seduced her and now lay at the bottom of the harbour, which Roderick felt at this point would be no great loss. He just hoped it wasn't something that meant they were going to have to weigh anchor in the next half hour.
It was not. It was nothing that he had expected at all.
"I met with someone last night, in the bar on the beach we all go to," Washington said, once they were alone in the Captain's cabin. "Someone from home."
He left an ominous pause.
"Home? Barbados?"
"Right. Fellow by name of Shank, he work for my master back then. Poor white, redlegs we call 'em."
"I see...?" Roderick suppressed a vivid mental image of a small man with bright red legs, and waited for the punch.
"He a good man, decent, works with horses. He didn't care for how my old master treated a mare that was sick, quarrelled with him and left his service. Turns out he work for Mr Isaac Crowther now."
Washington paused impressively.
"All right, so...? That sounds useful, you have an acquaintance who can perhaps help us reach Crowther?" Roderick said, hopefully, all the time knowing that Washington was working up to imparting bad news of some sort.
"He's happy in his new place. Very content, say Mr Crowther a kind and considerate master. Don't shoot horses unnecessarily."
"That's good to know. I wouldn't like to think that Lady Elspeth's future husband was a man with a reputation for cruelty or—ahm—horse abuse."
"In fact he was on business in La Guiara for Mr Crowther, here to buy some fancy animal from Argentina. We got talking. I made sure he talk about Mr Crowther, might be useful—just as you say. Made sure to be real interested in that gentleman. And know what I learned?"
"No, but do go on and tell me."
"He was full of talk that his master going to be wed, to some fine fancy lady from home. And he said it was a damned shame for that fine fancy lady, because Mr Crowther, he married already."
"He—what?"
"Oh, not in the eyes of the law, or nothing like that. But in the eyes of God and the whole Crowther plantation, every man there know it. See, she be a house slave, classy. I know the type. Shank say she sleep every night in his bed, no hiding it. More than that, she have three children, and Mr Crowther has them in the house and treats them like his own, which is because they is."
Roderick leaned back in his chair and stared up at the Quartermaster, who had remained standing. The more impressively to impart his disturbing story, no doubt. "He lives with this woman openly and acknowledges three children by her?"
"Shank tell me every man on the Crowther plantation know all about it."
"Then what the hell does he think he's about, engaging himself to an innocent girl from Scotland?" Roderick exclaimed irritably, although he knew the answer perfectly well. Even if Crowther loved this slave girl, it would be impossible for him to marry her. He must have been feeling the pressure to find an eligible wife, in order to produce legitimate offspring to inherit the estate.
Washington snorted. "All I hear, she no innocent."
"That's enough," Roderick snapped. "I won't have you or anyone else talk slightingly of the Lady Elspeth again. I'm serious."
Washington crossed his arms and looked unmoved. "Shank said he feel sorry for Mr Crowther's bride, I say—what about the poor girl who's loved him all this time, and her little ones? What is going to happen with them when Lady Hoity get there?"
Roderick was unable to summon up much concern for an unknown maidservant and her offspring; it was Lady Elspeth whose situation troubled him. Even if Crowther sent away his mistress and children, he would not be entering into marriage as a free man, ready to love his new wife. Everyone around her would know that. And if, as was entirely possible, Crowther maintained his existing family right alongside his lawful bride, then she would be let in for a life of misery, jealousy and humiliation. She might quickly grow to hate her husband; but how much the worse, in a way, if she fell in love with him.
He pinched his nose and pressed his fingers briefly into his eyes. He could see her lovely, open, eager face, her eyes bright and innocent—innocent, despite her wanton impulses—and he knew that she was very ready to give her heart away forever.
It was the stormiest meeting of the crew since the time Roderick had confronted the previous Captain, Jack Lantern Jones, with evidence that he had been salting away a proportion of their plunder for his own personal enrichment. On that occasion, Roderick had had difficulty in preventing a sizeable faction binding Jack Lantern hand and foot and feeding him to the sharks.
That was effectively what they wanted to do now, to Lady Elspeth, if in a metaphorical sense. The whole crew was crowded into the great cabin, and the mood was incendiary.
"You're saying," shouted the Bombardier, "that we don't ransom her to her husband, just because her husband is bedding a housemaid? How does that stop him paying up?"
"It isn't right," said Roderick simply.
There was an ugly roar of dissent.
"What bloody business is it of ours?" said the Bombardier, who was proving unexpectedly stubborn and outspoken in defence of the anticipated windfall.
"It's our business," said Roderick, "because the Lady Elspeth is in our custody. We can still collect a ransom for her, by returning her to her family in Scotland."
This time the response was nothing short of uproar. Roderick had to shout over it to be heard.
"Listen! The Heron can sail safely into British waters, and the Marquess of Crieff is likely to pay far more for his daughter's safe return than some plantation owner who has never so much as seen her."
"Or maybe he'll have us all hung!" cried the Bombardier.
It was clear from the shouts of agreement all around that he carried his audience with him.
"Scotland is a long, long ways away," said Washington slowly.
Until this point, he had said nothing. Roderick had rather assumed that the Quartermaster was in agreement with the new plan, out of sympathy for the house slave mistress. He looked at him sharply. "The Heron could do it in less than three weeks, with a fair wind."
"What the man say is right. They catch us, we dead men."
"What are we now—cowards?" He knew as he spoke that it was the wrong thing to say, but he was goaded beyond restraint.
While the rest of the men yelled their fury at this insinuation, Washington remained cool and motionless. "What we are, man, is not stupid. That little merchantman, not even armed. Fine and good for going to Barbados. All the way across the ocean, right into the belly of the beast? No way that end well."
The rumble from the men was an assenting murmur.
"We take her to Barbados," Washington said firmly, and he was addressing not Roderick, but the crew.
"No." Roderick stepped in front of him, putting himself between the large Quartermaster and the rest of the men.
"You well out-voted here, Captain." Washington put a slight sneering emphasis on the title.
"I said no. I wasn't asking for anyone else to agree with me. I will not allow the Lady Elspeth to be handed over to a man who is already bound to another. Anyone who wan
ts to try, goes through me."
"Me an' a'." With a slight shrug, and not quite meeting Roderick's eye, Stirling stepped out from the group and stood beside his Captain.
Roderick could still see the bruise on his cheek where he had punched him, and a crust of blood where his signet ring must have broken the skin.
Washington crossed his arms, squaring up impassively to the pair of them. "Two don't look like too formidable an obstacle."
The rest of the men were watching them both avidly, ready to take a cue from Washington but too well used to following Roderick's lead to entirely disregard him.
As he always had in moments of crisis, all his life—ever since, at any rate, that fateful night the ship on which he was running away had been overrun by pirates—Roderick saw all his options distinct and plain before him, and chose the most reckless and unwise one with a perfectly clear head.
He dropped the bag of gold he had received from the incurious French merchant onto the table.
"That's half the payment for the Heron's cargo," he said. "We'll get the other half when we deliver the goods to the buyer later today. Take it all. Take the Chieftain. Crown yourself Captain—I resign. On condition that I get the Heron, and I take the Lady Elspeth."
There was a stunned silence. It was evident that nobody had expected this development. A fight, a showdown, yes; not a capitulation. Even Washington's impassivity was ruffled, and he looked wrong-footed.
"And why should you get to take away her ladyship, if she be so valuable?" he demanded.
"Oh, come on, Mr President. You know very well that I am the only one here remotely capable of successfully negotiating a ransom with a gentleman like Crowther, or anyone else in her ladyship's rank of life. I can speak their language—I could get everyone out of it alive, and enriched. If you and the rest of you insist on hauling our prisoner to Barbados on your own, you'll likely all end up dead or in chains."
A slight spasm passed over Washington's features. He wasn't going to acknowledge his fear of going near the land where he had been enslaved, Roderick knew, but Roderick now had no compunction about making use of it.
"I will take her ladyship back to Scotland," he pressed on. "If fortune favours me, I will return and split the ransom with you all. If not—well, either way, you have what you wanted, Washington. Assuming the men agree."
Washington turned briefly to look at the men. There were mumbled 'ayes', but there was a general air of surprise and confusion. Roderick could see that his offer to share the booty, even though they had declared themselves unwilling to share the risk, had disconcerted many of them.
He wondered how Stirling felt about having inadvertently volunteered for the rash voyage.
"I can't sail with a crew of two," he said. "Any men feel like joining me, you'll be welcome. Otherwise I'll have to pick up some men onshore, which I would prefer not to do. I'll be on the Heron."
And he left them in what was no longer his cabin, before anything else could be said on either side.
Chapter Eleven
Elspeth watched the coast of Venezuela recede until it was a tiny wavering line of green against the horizon, which vanished in an instant as if a magical land in a fairytale. She was alone again on her wide, wide ocean, and free.
Her heart sang within her. She had been alarmed when Captain Scot had come to her cabin and whisked her out of it, his hand in hers, as if her life depended on it. He had taken her from the pirate ship back to the sadly empty and silent Heron, and locked her in her old cabin there—actually turned the key on her—telling her to keep quiet and stay hidden.
She was left there quite alone for what felt like a long time, though she had no way of measuring time as her malfunctioning watch was with her other possessions on board the Chieftain. Her cabin on the Heron was much larger than her borrowed quarters on the pirate ship, being second in splendour only to the poor slain Captain's, but she now felt it had a desolate air.
Outside the ship, indeed directly below her porthole, there was for a time a lot of noise; shouting to and fro in a rough foreign tongue, clattering of heavy objects and slapping of oars on water. Then everything went quiet for a while, and Elspeth was seized by the fear that she had been trapped alone on a haunted ship. She bit down rising unease, her imagination running relentlessly in all directions. Had she been hidden here because the authorities were going to board the Chieftain, and the pirates did not want her discovered? Did Venezuela even have authorities?
When she felt the unmistakeable sensation of the whole ship lurching free from its anchor and setting into motion as the wind caught its sails, she began to panic.
She knew Mr Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner. She remembered her mother reading passages of it to her in the temple, as they had called the folly on the west lawn, on one of the golden evenings of their last summer. It had scarcely been suitable material for a ten year old, Elspeth thought years later when she picked up the volume for herself; but the idea of a lost ship, mystically powered and manned by the decaying corpses of its dead crew, had haunted her imagination as a child. Her mother had had a talent for reading, imbuing even the most trifling prose with drama and atmosphere As the Heron moved away from the port as if by itself, so silently, the chill of her words on a warm summer's day came back over her like a fever.
"Captain!" she screamed, banging at the door. It rattled and creaked against the lock, but remained fastened. "Captain Scot! Is there anyone there? Help! Let me out!"
Almost immediately, she heard the clatter of footsteps and the door was flung open.
Half-expecting an animated corpse by this time, at the sight of Captain Scot Elspeth threw herself impulsively into his arms. Then, realising in time that this was not very seemly behaviour, she changed her hug into a decorous little semi-swoon.
The Captain caught her gallantly, just as he ought, in a firm strong embrace, and half-lifted her back into the cabin and onto her stripped-down bunk.
The sight of him had reassured Elspeth that the ship was not after all taken over by wraiths; but as she propped herself up on her elbows and looked at him properly, she was troubled again in quite a different way.
His eyes were darkened, as if he had not slept all the night before, and she was sure that his face was pale below his tan. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him what the matter was, but he spoke before she could blurt the question out.
"I'm taking you home," he said.
"Home? To—Scotland?"
"Yes, your ladyship. To Scotland. I just hope—" He sighed. "I hope I don't have reason to regret it."
"Oh! You will not regret it!" Elspeth sat up straight in her excitement, and in consequence collided with him gently. He had sat on the bunk after laying her there, and was still leaning over her.
He took her arms to steady her, and hesitated, then gave them a small squeeze and stood abruptly.
"Why are we on the Heron?"
"Because sailing into British waters in a pirate ship would be marginally more dangerous than doing so in a stolen one. I have your trunk outside, I'll bring it—in a moment."
"Where is Birnie?"
"She stayed behind."
"In Venezuela?"
"With Washington. And everyone else. With the exception of my indefatigably faithful First Mate, and a handful of desperate fellows whom I think may not have thoroughly understood my shaky Spanish, we are alone." At last, he gave a small smile.
Elspeth responded with a brilliant one of her own, which rose irresistibly from the flare of joy in her breast. "Thank you," she said, and impulsively held out her hand to him.
She meant him at least to take it and kiss it formally. She hoped, in fact, that he would take it and then draw her to him. He did neither. He resumed his frown, made a perfunctory bow, and left her alone.
But in her joy at the news that they were actually sailing homewards, she could not feel too disappointed. Nor did he lock the door again, so after a while she ventured out onto the deck to see the coast o
f South America disappear. Although she knew that it was not really the same place as the island where Mr Isaac Crowther still waited for her, in her mind Venezuela and Barbados had merged into one. She was moving away from the dreadful entrapment of a life chained to a man she cared nothing about, and that was what mattered for the moment.
But the moment could not last. Now that she was quite alone at night, with no Birnie snuffling on the floor below her, doubts and fears crowded her. It had been many long weeks now, and she of course had had no news at all of what was going on at home. It was possible that her father had died, it was possible that James had married Lady Arabella Grenfell. It was even possible that her brother-in-law Lord Leith had taken a turn for the worse after his fall, and Henrietta was now a widow. Events that would have been monumentally important in Edinburgh or at Dunwoodie seemed as faint to her imagination now as a column in the newspaper about an uprising in some distant colony; but she was heading back towards it all, to the great complicated drama of her family, and she would be forced to play her part in it again.
Except, as she now realised, it was always a bit-part, and that was probably why she had felt so very constrained and unhappy and perhaps why she had tried to create a bigger role for herself with her foolish antics. Her importance had ended in the terrible autumn that followed the perfect summer of her tenth year. All at once, she was no longer the most beloved child and plaything of a most beloved mother, and her father...
She did feel something, a little hard pang below her breast, when she wondered whether her father was dead. But really, he had died for her long ago.
When she could not push down these thoughts as hard as she usually did, particularly at night when the darkness was hot and relentless, a little haunting question popped to the surface of her mind. Did she really want to go home at all?
She did not dare confess this doubt to Captain Scot, especially after she discovered that he had given up command of the Chieftain of the Seas in order to defy his men and take her home.
