by Smith, Skye
"Well once the skipper was off the ship, and most of his men, and our men, then Captain Brown got me to help him in the cabin, you know, to search it for important papers and things. I don't read, but when I showed Captain Brown a tin full of money and some letters and such, he ordered me out of the cabin to go and fetch Captain Whipple. When I got back, Captain Brown was fighting a fire in the cabin with a wet blanket."
"So did Brown set the fire?" asked James. "Were you witness to Brown setting the fire?"
"I didn't actually see it start. He says that he accidentally knocked over one of the many lanterns that the surgeon had been using for looking to me and the skipper. He says that the lamp oil spilled on the papers and then nothing would stop it from spreading."
"So the papers you found for him were burned, but you don't know what they were."
"Yes, and he said that the money burned too, though I am sure I remember him putting the money in his coat pocket. It was a lot of money, all in ten pound notes. I mean, I think it was ten pound notes, because I have never seen so big of a bill before. By the time more men got back on board to fight the fire, there was no stopping it. The schooner burned to the waterline."
"They have committed piracy against a naval vessel. Oh, this is bad, very bad," James said thoughtfully. "Worse, Jon here is a witness both to the shooting and to the lighting of the fire."
"Shush," said Britta, "leave him be. He needs his bed." She helped Jon to lie down, and then she pulled a chair close to the bed so she could sit with him. There was a rap at the door, and the wife came in with dressings and scissors.
His wife handed the dressings to Britta and then pulled her husband close to her. "Come," she said, "the lad is in good hands. His sister knows more about healing than most of the physicians in this town."
"This is not good, love," James said in a mournful tone. "What happened at the schooner was piracy. I fear that when it becomes known, then the entire Navy will sail here from Boston. Don't you see? It was planned in our tavern. This will be the first place they will come looking for conspirators." His eyes filled with tears, and he gulped.
"But you had nothing to do with it," she said.
"They won't care," he said with a sob, "they will call me a conspirator. Conspiracy to commit a crime carries the same penalties as the crime. We have to close the tavern. I have to go into hiding. And Jon must come with me because he was a witness, thee witness."
"But if the tavern doesn't open, then we won't be able to pay our note with the moneylender. We will lose everything," she fretted.
"Then we will hide at the house of the moneylender," he said it glibly, but when he thought about it, it made sense. "Of course. I will go and visit Red Jennison, and take Jon with me."
"Then you must take Britta too," she looked at the gentle touch of the sister caring for her brother over on the bed. "Look, see. She will not be parted from him. Yes, take the girl with you too." She looked at her husband. Could she trust him with her? She knew he longed for the girl. Their own passion had never been so good as now that he was working beside her all day. It didn't matter. She had no choice but to trust him.
* * * * *
They expected to be very late opening the tavern. With Jon ordered to keep to his bed, James had gone to the bakery while Britta cleaned up the mess from the night before. James discussed with Britta about whether they should open the tavern at all. What if there were naval agents in Providence already. Eventually he left her and pushed the barrow to the bakery, but he was nervously glancing around as if he imagined spies around every corner.
When Captain Brown and Captain Whipple knocked, Britta let them in but kept the tavern closed. She interrupted her cleaning to make them tea. "We have mint tea, Chinese black, Chinese green, and Indian hemp," she offered coldly.
Britta gave them an icy stare as she banged a jug of steaming Chinese black tea and another of steaming milk in front of them. Whipple was insulted and began to scold her, but Brown pulled at his sleeve and whispered, "She is the lad's sister. She has every right to be rude to us."
James arrived from the bakery and grabbed himself a cup and sat down next to them to share their tea. "Britta," John Brown called, "bring a cup and take tea with us. You should hear this, too." When she didn't come, he stood up and fetched her by the hand.
Britta came to the table with him, but had to sit immediately. His grip on her hand was sending a feeling of darkness and foreboding into her very soul. She thought she could smell the odor of burning bread, a sure sign of evil. Thankfully Brown let her hand go as he sat to explain things to James.
"The crew of the schooner, and her captain are now at Pawtuxet village. I sent my own men home. Watching the ship burn sobered them, and by now they will all be fretting about the repercussions. The village men, er, volunteered shall we say, to keep an eye on the crew and care for the skipper. The surgeon has stayed on. He says that within three days the captain will either make a turn for the better, or die.
I have instructed my men to pretend that last night never happened. Nobody is to tell stories of it to anyone, not even to their wife, and certainly not to any strangers. Nobody is to mention anyone else's names.
I have given some ten quid notes to the schooner's mates to pay for any of their expenses, and have told them to spread the word amongst their crew, that if they are cast adrift by the navy, that they would be offered berths on local ships."
He sighed and went on. "So far as I know, the only names that the crew may know are mine and the surgeons, and perhaps Captain Whipple here. I am hoping and planning for the outcome where the captain lives. He will face a court marshal, of course, which will find in his favor. That will spawn a wider inquest. If the naval crew do not know names, and our men keep their lips buttoned, then any inquest will be frustrated and surely fail."
"And if the skipper does not live?" asked James.
John Brown grimaced. "If the skipper dies, then heaven help all of us. The Navy will turn the incident from suspicious, but explainable, into outright piracy. That brings me to you, James. Whether the captain lives or not, everyone in Providence knows that this incident was planned in this tavern. For sure, you will be questioned. You need to disappear."
"I had already reached that conclusion," replied James.
"There is more," interrupted Captain Whipple. "The lad, this girl's brother. Is he here? Is he all right?"
"Yes he is here, no thanks to you," Britta's words carried venom, "His face, ohh his face." She began to sob.
"The surgeon said it would look much worse than it was for about two weeks," said John softly. He tried to put his arm around her to comfort her, but she shrugged away from him. "Britta, I fear for his life."
"What?" exclaimed James.
"Those treacherous louts, Joe and Ephe," John explained. "The lads that shot the skipper. My youngest son heard them talking. They don't trust the lad not to turn evidence against them. They were considering shutting the lad up, permanently."
"You are a sheriff," James said, "arrest them."
"On what charges?" replied John. "By recording the charges I will identify them and the lad as being at the Gaspee last night. The naval agents will grab them and make them tell all. I have given the louts some money and told them to leave Rhode Island. I don't know that they will. Their families are here."
"Oh fine," blurted Britta, "the murderer is paid off and goes free, and an honest lad must fear for his life."
"That is the way of this world, love," Whipple chuckled, but no one joined his mirth and Britta's icy stare made him regret his words.
"Don't worry John," James said, "I had already reached the same conclusion. My wife and I have decided that I must disappear until this all blows over, and that I must take Jon and Britta with me."
Britta looked at him as he spoke, "But Captain Lindsay, he wished to speak to me, to offer..." she stopped talking and blushed. "I must tell Captain Lindsay how to reach me."
James was shaking his hea
d at her. John Brown spoke first. "The girl is right. You must tell us where you will be hiding in case there is news."
"No John. If the naval agents come, it will be better for all, including you, that no one knows where to find us." James softened his expression and looked at Britta. "It is for the best." He motioned for her to follow him to the ale barrels, which she did. When they reached there, he looked busy, but spoke in urgent whispers to Britta.
"I don't trust John Brown and neither should you. Our hiding place must be kept secret from him. Secret, do you understand." James grabbed her by the wrist hard to make his point. "Lindsay is Brown's man. Brown is a slaver. Slavers do not respect the rights of others. They make good profits out of the utter misery of others. Brown would have all three of us silenced if his own safety or property was at risk."
"But ..." Britta had been thinking of Linday's offer to be mistress of a house. She had almost decided to say yes.
"But nothing," hissed James. "Brown would have Jon and me meet with fatal accidents, and he would sell you to some plantation master for a tidy sum. Do you understand?"
Britta nodded slowly. Brown had a dark touch, a dark smell. She knew from her mother's teaching that this meant that he had an evil mind, the kind that never feels guilt. "I understand."
* * * * *
* * * * *
MAYA’S AURA - the Redemptioner by Skye Smith
Chapter 7 - Along the post road to Boston
Maya looked up from Nana's notes from last night, and from her netbook and the Wikipedia articles about John Brown and the Gaspee. Nana was finally stirring in her bed so she took her a cup of tea. Nana reached for her bifocals and looked through them at her lovely great grand daughter who was bringing her tea in bed. To her, being served tea in bed was the height of luxury. She took the cup eagerly.
"I can't believe how many web sites talk about the burning of the Gaspee as if it was some big heroic and patriotic event" complained Maya.
"Ah, the double edged sword of the Internet," replied Nana, "Lots of information that is easy to find, but how much of it is true. The Gaspee is a bad example. It was one of the first events that our fledgling country propagandized."
"But it was an act of piracy by a bunch of thugs and smugglers. I know, I served them all ale that night. I mean, Britta served them ale. It was a sneak attack on a ship that was already in trouble. How could anyone twist the story to make it seem like some great patriotic event? You would think they would, like, be ashamed of being a part of it."
"Well it was old Rhode Island," Nana explained. "Rhode Island was very different from all the other provinces in New England. The others were created by very moral and fundamental religious groups, the Puritans in Massachusetts, the Dutch protestants in New York, the Quakers in Pennsylvania. Rhode Island was created by, shall we say, people with less strict morals. "
"Like the Marranos," Maya added. "I just looked them up. They migrated to Newport from the Spain and Portugal and from all of their colonies so that they could be free to be Jewish again. The Web says that Newport in this era was the third largest Jewish community in the new world, after New York City and Kingston in Jamaica."
"Exactly," Nana smiled. Back when she had been a professor, she had always enjoyed it when her students were turned on by learning new things. "Rhode Island was more connected to the Caribbean, especially to Jamaica, than the other provinces. It had a similar history rich with flamboyant pirates, like in the pirate movies"
"You mean like Johnny Depp. I love his movies."
"Well," Nana paused while wondering who Johnny Depp was. "I was thinking more like Tyronne Power and Errol Flynn."
"So if Newport was the center of the slave trade, it must have had all sorts of slave pens and slave markets, right?"
"Oh heavens no. Newport was where all the CEO's lived. A good CEO never makes a mess in the town that he lives in. The slave pens and markets were in Africa and on the sugar islands like Jamaica."
"Yeh, figures, typical. I've met some CEO's. They are dark to the touch. Psychos." said Maya and looked back at the screen of her netbook.
"Do you remember any of last nights crystal dreams?" Nana asked hopefully.
"Much of them, thanks to your notes. They really do help me to remember. Especially the note that Britta felt a darkness from John Brown. I completely empathize with her. I always feel such darkness from the touch of psychopaths. So do you. I have been trying to find out on the web what they called psychopaths in Britta's day."
"No such word. Psychology is a recent study, only since the 1920's. Before that they would have been known as demons, possessed by demons, or touched by the devil. "
"Or slavers, or warriors," Maya added. "The articles on the Web tell that John Brown was at one time or another into everything that would today be against the law. He was a pirate, a smuggler, an arms dealer, a slave master, an opium dealer, like everything nasty you can think of. It's no wonder that Britta feared him so. Especially since she could sense the demon in him."
"More tea please," said Nana holding her cup towards Maya.
Maya walked over to the tea pot with the cup, "I've been sitting here eating my toast and thinking about whether all slave masters would have been psychopaths. The standard definitions of a psycho always include the words 'no remorse'. So no guilt, or no empathy. No sympathy maybe, but you know how to find sympathy in the dictionary don't ya? Right between shit and syphilis."
"And you think that to be a slave master you would have to feel no guilt for enslaving others, and no empathy about what if the roles were reversed?" asked Nana as she took the refilled cup from Maya.
"Yeh, sort of. Like, you would have to think that you were superior, completely superior to the slave, and that you therefore had the right to be the master. Either that or you would have to take an evil glee in punishing others, you know, the same mindset that would torture a kitten just because it was cute."
"And in the dreams, was John Brown like that?"
"I don't know yet, and I don't know if I want to find out." Maya sat back down at the table and looked at her last half of toast. "The dreams are very realistic, so they like, have a heavy effect on my emotions. I feel the love, feel the sadness, feel the terror, and the sadness makes me cry, and I hate feeling the terror. The terror comes through so strongly that the effects continue long after I wake up."
A sudden silence made Nana look over at the girl. She had gone absolutely still. Was she was in a trance. Nana crept over and sat beside her, and quietly reached out for a fresh piece of paper and a pen.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Britta watched out of the Boston Post coach window as the countryside rolled by. The big trees along the road hid the horizon from her so she didn't know if this was hilly country or a valley or what. She had her elbow crooked into Jon's because her brother was swaying back and forth, not so much asleep as in a drugged doze.
The coach lurched to a stop in a cloud of fine summer dust and an odor of horse piss. Britta coughed and held a handkerchief over her mouth and nose and looked at her brother. Jon had spent most of the short journey in an opium syrup daze. James helped him down from the coach and made sure he was steady on his feet, before he turned to help Britta down.
His wife had given her a Puritan style outfit left over from her own childhood in a Puritan village. It was a youth size and Britta over-filled it at the bust and hips. The drab serge was meant to be covering and modest, but on Britta it seemed to stretch, and move in ways that were anything but modest. Two men had leaped down from the coach hoping to be the one to help the lithe blonde to step down.
The skirt of the dress was tight enough that she was forced to pull at it in order to do the deep knee bend required to descend from the coach. The man that was steadying her moaned under his breath. The other tried to make himself useful by catching the two bags that were being handed down from the roof. Unfortunately for him, the deep knee bend happened just as the driver let go of th
e heaviest bag, and with him otherwise distracted, he was brained by the thing.
James pulled the two teens and their bags off the road so that they wouldn't be covered with even more dust as the horses started up again. They were the only people at this cross road, and for this James was thankful. He was a well-known character to the folks that traveled this post road, and he wanted as few people as possible noting where he had descended. He started walking away from the Boston road immediately, with the teens hauling their things and following him.
James hurried the pace until they were about two hundred yards away from the road and hidden by the first hedges and trees. He stopped to allow poor Jon to catch up, and took the opportunity to look around and across the wide valley they were entering. It was amazing. Walk two hundred paces away from a highway and it was as if you had gone back in time fifty years. This rural valley was so different from the hustle and bustle of modern Providence.
They continued to walk, and walk, until they reached the small Eagle River that the valley was named after. On its banks they sat in the shade, took off their shoes, and soaked their hot and dusty feet. He had been hoping to ask some passersby the directions to the Jennison house, but the only person on the road had been an old man dressed in black on a small cart and he had just sniffed at James' citified look and not stopped to chat.
"Which way?" asked Jon, looking around.
"I don't know," James admitted. "I've never been to Jennison's house before. We met on a packet ship inbound to Providence from New York. When I told him my dream of renting the large house near the dock, and turning it into a boarding house and a tavern, he took an interest. He loaned me the money to make my dream come true. Ever since he has stayed with us, or at least taken a tea in the tavern, whenever he was laid over on his way to and from New York."
James looked at the covered bridge just down stream from them. "Well, from the descriptions Jennison gave me, we must almost be there. His place is beside this river, but I can't recollect on which side of it. Let me think. If we choose wrongly, then it may mean backtracking to this bridge. Wait, there is a large dairy herd on the other side. I remember him talking about a large dairy farm. We cross over."
