The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1)

by Andrew Wareham

  “Well I’m buggered!”

  “Not if you’s careful about turnin’ you back on him, Master Tom.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, Tom began to chuckle, not particularly pleased to have appeared to be a youthful innocent.

  “What about Miss Amelia, Master Tom?”

  “Convoy’s not due for another month. She’ll have to come with us and sail from Halifax, I suppose. Damned nuisance that will be!”

  “Pretty little girl, Master Tom.”

  “No, not for me, Joseph, don’t fancy her.”

  “I do.”

  “But…”

  “Suppose I learns to speak like whitey do, Master Tom?”

  “You ain’t that black in colour, Joseph – say your mum came from Italy or Spain, the Mediterranean somewhere – by the time we’re in Scotland, they won’t know any different.”

  “Sounds right to me, Mister Andrews – slave in New York, free man of colour in Halifax, Mr Joseph Star in Glasgow?”

  “No reason why not, Joe – my name’s Tom, by the way.”

  “Not in New York it ain’t, Master Tom, nor in Halifax.”

  “Better not get a leg over the girl in New York, Joseph – they’d hang you for sure if the word got out, or even the suspicion of it for that matter. Will she be willing?”

  “She surely got a nice smile if she ain’t, Master Tom!”

  It promised to be a complication, Tom felt – it could be avoided by getting rid of Joseph, easy enough to do in New York, the merest mention that he believed his black servant to be annoying the young orphan girl staying with him while waiting for the convoy, and there would be a lynching party. But he valued Joseph, and liked the man; he was clever, possibly more so than Tom himself, he was honest and reliable and, above all, grateful for being taken out of Antigua, and he was useful – Tom’s back was always safe with Joseph there. If he was not to be a servant and was to remain with him, then he must be a partner, junior, though, not equal.

  Miller sent word of his presence to Bob and they went out of town to meet him – he seemed rather unwilling to venture inside the lines, within sight of the garrison.

  At some point he had transhipped from the ox-wagons and had put the cargo onto drays pulled by heavy horses, teams of six with four and five ton loads.

  “Looks like it’s all local, Bob, using drays – they don’t never go out of town, usually. Two hundred tons, thereabouts, of tobacco. Good stuff, one of my boys checked it out – he comes from down on the James River. Got some beaver pelts and buffalo hides as well, picked ‘em up from a warehouse up country a ways.”

  Tom nodded agreement, he would take the extra – there was no way he would consider arguing with Miller or the teamsters he had with him – dressed in rough-cured hide, frontier fashion, bearded, dirty, mean-looking, and every one of them with a rifle or musket at his side, a knife in his belt, at least two pistols holstered. Fifty-five wagons, five horsemen and Miller himself, each of the wagons with a riding horse tethered on a loose rein – he would bet on them against a battalion of redcoats.

  “There won’t be any questions asked, about the extras, I presume, Colonel Miller?” Bob enquired, straight-faced.

  “None, Bob, not for at least three months.”

  Bob caught Tom’s eye, nodded.

  “Initial agreement was for three hundred guineas, gold, Colonel Miller. You will find that in this bag, sir. What of the wagons and dray-horses, have you a purpose for them, must you take them back to their owners or will you wish us to dispose of them for you?”

  “They go back, thank’ee, Mr Andrews, loaded with flour, at least, I trust, Bob?”

  Bob nodded, it could be done, gunpowder as well and other necessities of rural existence.

  “What of the furs and hides, Colonel?”

  “A hundred, sight unseen?”

  Take his word for the deal? Or refuse and demand to inspect the goods, implying that he doubted their quality, and by implication, Miller’s integrity. He would be gone within a week, but he could be dead inside five minutes; Tom grinned and stretched out his hand.

  “Done, sir.”

  They shook and waited a few minutes while Joseph counted out the coins.

  Miller’s men left and Bob took an hour to rustle up drivers for the run to the dock.

  Everything was aboard ship next day, bills of lading agreed to be true and countersigned by a respected New York attorney, the cargo sold on almost immediately. Four days later Tom, Joseph, Amelia and Bennet boarded a trader for Halifax, joined the regular monthly convoy north, well escorted by the navy. Jenny waved them goodbye, shrugging as she turned her back and looked for her next meal-ticket – it was still better than being a governess and drudge in some little squire’s house in the sticks in England; mind you, she was late this month, which could turn out to be an inconvenience, but that could be dealt with as well - one way or another.

  Five days in a hotel in the back-water that was Halifax, little more than a naval base that also exported salted and smoked cod by the thousands of tons; the town stank of fish, fresh, cured and rotting; the people were little better, the great bulk of them Scots and unintelligible and smelling remarkably like the fish. Then the tedium of an Atlantic crossing – there was simply nothing to do as a passenger other than play cards, talk, read or drink too much. Tom was no gambler – he had never learnt any card games and had just enough sense not to try to pick them up, in the company in the big cabin. There was a pair of army officers off on furlough and another who had sent his papers in, was home to take up his inheritance, to live the life of a gentleman of leisure, so he said. In addition there was a merchant who had come out to negotiate a contract for salt fish to Portugal and another who had come to buy straight timbers – no longer to be found in England - for his shipyard; besides them were the families of three other officers, returning to England from America before the shambles of the inevitable hasty retreat. Tom had little in common with any of them, but was able to borrow books and practice his ‘genteel’ speech – he let it be known that he had been representing his family in America, trying to recover or sell up what he could of their tobacco interests in the south, with little success, he regretted to say. He had brought away his warehouse manager, for fear that he would be taken for a man of colour and put into bondage – he was from a family of Mediterranean origin, long expert in tobacco, settled in England since King Charles’ day, very respectable.

  The story was accepted and Joseph’s obvious friendship with Amelia caused no eyebrows to rise; Bennet, who had known Joseph as a black man in New York, said nothing – she quite liked the man and the master had offered her a permanence as housekeeper when they set up for themselves in England, much safer than having to seek out a place as a maidservant and possibly ending up working in a pub or hotel rather than respectably in service with a place for life and a pension.

  Glasgow with winter coming on, still a small town but growing rapidly, the first smokes rising from steam engines, the docks crowded with foodstuffs and timber and cotton and tobacco and sugar coming in, textiles and iron goods for export. There were shipyards, many of them newly built, along the Clyde, all the evidence of a thriving, booming city – but it was very Scottish, an English accent would be out of place in business here, and, in any case, they would be wiser to disappear from sight again here as they had originally planned.

  Book One: A Poor Man

  at the Gate Series

  Chapter Five

  They took places in the stage coach leaving from the Post Office at dawn, the ancient faded green rattler - fifty or more years old, nearly ten feet wide and twenty long, a farm dray with a body roughly slapped on, a pair of bench seats and a big wicker basket at the rear for bags and parcels, and traditionally the poorest of passengers, the basket scramblers - expecting with ordinary good fortune, the agent said, to reach Carlisle before nightfall; if it was delayed then they would have to put up at any wayside inn that had beds.

  “Ninety miles
, Tom, and ten hours of daylight – not a hope in hell!”

  Joseph was unimpressed by the coachman’s promises – they might make the run in one day at the height of summer when there was fifteen hours of light, but approaching the autumn equinox there was no chance. He knew little of coaches but had hired enough wagons to estimate what sort of speed they could make and the voyage down the Firth and into port had given him an idea of the countryside and its hills.

  The coachman chirruped to his six horses and they set off at a sedate walk through the unlit, shadowy streets, stopping less than a mile away at a small beer house to pick up five more passengers, all of them going up onto the roof although there would have been room for four of them comfortably inside.

  Bennet sniffed and said she had thought so.

  “Thought what, Bennet?”

  “Shouldering, Mister Andrews, sir. Thruppence a mile, you paid the company for us, sir – two bob in the driver’s pocket for them, you can bet, sir.”

  “What about the guard?”

  “He gets a cut, that’s for sure, sir.”

  The road was in better condition than most in Britain, having been rebuilt after the Jacobite rising and maintained ever since against military need, and the coach was able to trundle along at a steady eight miles an hour on the flat and up the lesser slopes; as soon as the gradient became noticeable the pace dropped to a walk, a plodding four or five miles an hour.

  They stopped to change horses and seek refreshment after three hours and twenty miles, the outside passengers quietly disappearing and being replaced by half a dozen more; Tom stood next to the coach driver, in front of the malodorous wall that served the men’s needs.

  “How far do you expect to get today, driver?”

  “Moffat, sir, probably. Good inn there, sir, rooms for the four of ye.”

  Fifty miles, a little more than halfway.

  It rained that night and they made Carlisle at dusk on the second day, the landlord of the posting inn seeming to think they had made good time and certain that they could reach Lancaster in no more than three more days, Liverpool or Manchester on the following afternoon.

  Another Accommodation Coach next morning, like the first, ancient, stale-smelling and apparently, unsprung. The leather upholstery was original, cracked, sweat-stained, stuffed with old, matted horsehair and lacking any vestige of comfort – passengers were few and the company made its money on the carriage of mails and small parcels that could not be sent by sea. It seemed that most people who had to travel any distance rode or hired a post-chaise or, better still, went by sea, although not in the autumn or winter months; the great majority simply stayed at home, nine out of ten men and women never travelling more than ten miles from their birthplace in their whole lives and most of the rest mobile only because they had been caught by the press or forcibly enlisted into the army by the local Bench of Magistrates.

  Southern Scotland and the Borderlands seemed to be empty – a few sheep on the uplands, rare farmsteads in the sheltered valleys, a very few fields showing stubble of rye or oats from the recent harvest, villages far apart and uniformly poor – rarely a curtain in a window or a larger house to show a doctor or even a shopkeeper’s residence. It was a wasteland, compared even with Tom’s memories of rural Dorset, itself not a rich county by any means.

  The lowlands of Lancashire, when they eventually reached them, were a thriving agricultural country with a busy population and heavily cultivated fields. There were dairy cattle and herds of beef, very few goats, flocks of sheep on all the hills and a mass of small fields surrounding the many large villages and small towns.

  “Spuds and turnips and greens more than wheat and barley,” Bennet commented, the only one of them bred to the English land. “Selling to the townies, they must be, Mister Andrews – markets in the local towns, close to ‘and, like, because it costs too much to travel far. Got to be money in they towns, or they wouldn’t do it.”

  Advice from the landlord of their inn in Lancaster sent them to the old borough of St Helens, situated midway between Manchester and Liverpool and in the centre of the new industrial towns that were just starting to grow. Cotton, iron and glass, they were told, all being made in huge new manufacturies, often employing as many as one hundred men under a single roof, while the old coal drifts were being turned into underground mines producing thousands of tons a year. There were canals, as well, and even, so mine host had heard, new engines worked by steam, though mostly it was watermills that supplied the power, so much so that some people were calling the new places ‘mills’.

  “Should be openings for merchants there, Joe,” Tom said as they sat themselves into the post chaise they had decided to hire from Lancaster – so much more wealthy seeming than a mere stagecoach, it would make a far better impression of financial probity, and at four shillings a mile it damned well ought to, Tom reflected.

  “Why stick to merchanting, Tom?” Joseph replied, the short name still sticking in his mouth but forcing himself to the sign of equality that was necessary in the new country and in his new identity.

  “Because I don’t know anything else, Joe?”

  “Then we can learn, can’t we. It’s all new, Tom, none of them can know a lot more than us, because they must be making it up as they go along.”

  It was a good argument, Tom had to admit.

  “What do we do first, Joe? We need to make the decision now.”

  They had talked about little else over the days of travel, had still no firm plans.

  “If you please, sir,” Amelia made a very rare contribution, having been well brought up and understanding that young misses should not intrude upon their elders and particularly should not involve themselves in men’s business. “If we had a house of our own, then we would seem to be settled and respectable. And you would have to talk to lawyers, and Papa always said that they know everything that is going on in any town.”

  It made sense, it would all add to the appearance of worth that would be so important to them while they were starting out and making contacts and building their new business, whatever it might be.

  The landlord of the posting house was happy to oblige them with advice and information – his business was growing every month, it seemed to him, all on the back of the new firms starting up. He kept another chaise now and had recently bought another dozen of horses and had the builders in to extend the yard and the premises – eight more big bedrooms, and a bathroom with a cold water tap and a drain, only the hot water needing to be bucketed up in so modern a convenience. He was considering one of the new water closets as well, but was still not wholly persuaded of so daring an innovation, nor was he sure that his customers would know how to use one.

  “Three rooms, sir, one each for Mr Andrews and Mr Star, a double for Miss Jackson and her maid – your ward, you say, Mr Andrews?” This was a respectable house – there would be no goings-on here.

  “In effect, Mr Smithers, though not in law – her father, the major, died in New York earlier this year and begged me almost in his last words to escort her back to England, her mother long deceased. The major had been unlucky in an investment, I understand, and had little in the way of funds to leave her and it had been my intent to take her to an uncle who lives in a small way in the south country, but it seems to me that there is an understanding growing between her and Mr Star and I rather suspect she would far rather be wed and independent than a burden and a drudge in an unknown relative’s house. She is a pleasant young lady, and he is a man of respectable birth, and it seems to me to be a good thing for them both.”

  The landlord agreed – there was little future for an undowered young miss dumped out of the blue on her relatives, much better a respectable marriage. Tom consoled himself that he had been telling the strictest truth – Joseph had told him that his Carib grandfather had been a chief in his tribe, thus qualifying him as an aristocrat of sorts, at least the equal of an English baronet in his own land.

  “A house, Mr Andrews? B
uying over on the west side of town, upwind of the smells and smokes, of course. All the fires are coal now, you can’t get firewood for love or money and the air gets thick in winter, sir, and there are even steam engines at some of the pits now, smoking all year round. They drive the pumps, I am told, necessary now that some of the mines are cutting coal a good one hundred feet underground! The iron foundries are mostly at the eastern end of the town, and the glassworks is out on the sands, of course. The cotton spinners are spread all through, in the sheds at the back of their cottages, though one or two larger places are on the streams up the valley over towards the Wigan side. Weavers are all small men, working out of their own houses all over the place. Everybody who is anybody lives upwind of the smell, better yet out of town if they possibly can. For a house, the attorneys of the town can act to point you to the sellers, and, of course, they must draw up any contract in real estate – purchase of land must be recorded in written contract, is not lawful otherwise. I could give your name to my own lawyer, sir, recommending you, as it were?”

  “That would be very convenient to me, Mr Smithers, please do so.”

  Smithers’ attorney was ancient, grey, desiccated and highly respectable; he sat behind his desk and listened gravely to Tom as he announced his desire to buy a house of appropriate size, to be his base whilst he found his way into the local business community.

  “I, myself, Mr Andrews know nothing of, ah, ‘business’, hardly the preserve of the genteel, I understand. Of real estate, however, I believe I have some slight acquaintance, and can represent you to your advantage. There are a number of properties to be sold in the better part of town and the immediate locality and my junior clerk will be pleased to escort you to the viewing of several. I understand that young Mr Clapperley, the son of my late partner, himself an attorney with his own practice, numbers some of the, ah, ‘business community’ amongst his clientele, and may be aware of opportunities for investment, for cash, money being short at the moment.”