“Bloody Hell,” Buckles groaned with impatience. “What sort o’ bother have you rr… mean t’say, what need have you of troops?”
“Have you rude or raw Colonials,” Livesey thought he’d meant to say, feeling a quick flash of resentment.
“We’re goin’ to be solvin’ th’ murder o’ Harry Tresmayne today, Captain Buckles,” Marsden informed him, squinting a little at the imperious tone the soldier used. “Could be trouble. Faction trouble … when they learn one o’ their own is to be arrested for qüestionin’.” He gave him a head-to-toe look-over. “Are you prepared for such?”
“The Levellers, you mean, sir?” Buckles snorted with distaste. “The late Tresmayne’s faction.”
“Exactly who I mean, sir,” Marsden drawled. “Gonna fetch people to th’ courthouse here. I want it protected, lest somebody goes offhalf-cocked.”
“Perimeter ‘round the courthouse, aye,” Buckles agreed.
“Not that blatant, sir,” Marsden scowled. “Just… be present. On hand. A man or two t’guard th’ entries?”
“But … !” Capt. Buckles said, mouth agawp, and Livesey, who had been some sort of soldier, thought he looked irritated. No wonder, if Buckles had been rooted out of bed in the middle of the night, mustered and sent off before dawn. Boats from HMS Cruizer at the river’s mouth would have ferried Buckles and his troops up-river in the fogs at “first sparrow-fart.” A cold breakfast, if any, and it was no wonder that Buckles looked miffed! Here he’d come, keyed up to order Fix Bayonets, Load and Level on armed insurrectionists, now this vague, idle duty!
“File o’ men to go with my constable an’ his bailiffs to fetch th’ ones we want,” Marsden continued. “Not so much a press-gang as…”
“A sign of government interest in the matter?” Livesey offered.
“Exactly.” Marsden smiled. “No strong-arm work, ‘less some do offer resistance. Courtesy above all. I’ll insist on courtesy.”
“Courtesy,” Buckles muttered, as if trying to remember what that outlandish custom might be, tucking his outraged, disappointed chin into his neck-stock. “Very well, sir. Courteous, it’ll be. So, who’s the murderin’ bastard we’re to help your man arrest, then?”
“The constable will point him out t’ye, never fear. Prepared, are ye, sir?
“Of course I’m prepared, sir!” Buckles blustered. “Soldier’s always ready … the 16th Foot more than most, damn my eyes!”
“Then let’s get yer redcoats afoot, hey, Captain Buckles?” the magistrate all but cackled. “With luck, we’ll have this murder solved by sundown, th’ guilty in irons, an’ your men swillin’ th’ beer of a grateful borough.”
“Uhm, yes, of course, sir. Sturtt?”
“A moment, Leftenant?” Livesey whispered, taking Sturtt’s arm.
“Sir?” the young man replied stiffly, disliking being touched.
“One of the people you’ll be arresting will be a man named MacDougall, a rather hard-headed Scotsman,” Livesey explained. “He and his daughter will be coming into town today. Coming to my house. His girl is to see my daughter. I would greatly dislike anything … untoward in behavior done at my home, sir. MacDougall will most-like resent being taken, and he can be violent. You will take especial care?”
“I see, sir.” Sturtt nodded. “Never fear, sir. I’ll handle his arrest myself. And swear to protect the tranquility of your home.”
“More courteously than … ?” Livesey grinned, inclining his head a trifle to Captain Buckles.
“Oh, indeed, sir!” Lieutenant Sturtt whispered back with a sly grin.
Chapter 26
THE BEST was laid out in expectation of Biddy’s visit; fresh scones waiting in a napkin-covered bowl, tea things set out on a fresh tablecloth. The front rooms were as clean as they were going to get, considering. Bess scanned the room one more time in an anxious pet, wrinkling her nose for the hundredth time at the sour smell of fresh-burned wood and paint. All the camphor in the world couldn’t disguise it, nor all the sluicing and scrubbing she’d forced Samuel to do on the front of the house restore the appearance.
“Too grand, do you think?” she asked her brother, whirling to face him as he came in from the back porch off the kitchen, scrubbed and in fresh clothes.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Samuel breathed. “Sam’l, don’t blaspheme,” she chid him with a deep sigh. “Oh, for … !” He grunted. “It’s not like we’re havin’ King George over!
“I don’t want them put off by having it too showy, but…” Bess moaned, all but gnawing on a thumbnail. “If we don’t make some effort of welcome …”
“Serve ’em on the porch, then, why don’t you?” Samuel smirked. “Maybe that’ll make ’em feel more at ease. Now that’s showy, hey?”
“Oh, Sam’l!”
“Scatter some pig shit, so MacDougall’ll feel right at home.”
All she could do was growl at him, else she’d blaspheme herself! A tempting thought ofhurling something heavy at him crossed her mind.
“You want to meet her, or don’t you?” Bess said instead.
“After finding out who her daddy is, it don’t signify to me,” Samuel sniffed. “For ha’pence, I’d rather go huntin’! Damned foolish, if ya ask me. Here we almost got murdered our ownselves last night… house half burned to the ground, and you’re boilin’ tea water and got out the good china like it’s nothing! Didn’t get a wink o’ sleep, I didn’t. Up all night with the pistols, lest the bastards come back to finish the job. Had me fetching and scouring since the crack o’ dawn …” he ranted, waving his arms and striding aimlessly about the room.
Yet, Bess noted, he had shaved what boyish stubble he possessed and had taken more than usual pains about his appearance. He’d donned his Sunday best. And he continually fiddled with his neck-stock, like a lad working up his courage to abandon his sniggering cronies, cross a crowded salon, and ask a likely lass to dance.
Bess glanced at the mantel clock, willing it to advance hands to speed Biddy’s arrival. And end her nervous waiting. She drew a deep breath, took one last look at the room, and thought that it would have to do.
Am I welcoming an arsonist? she asked herself. She doubted it. Once her terror had subsided, and she had retired to her bedchamber to toss and turn and drink in the cleaner air from her one small window to escape the wet, charred stench, she had pondered the identity of the person who’d tried to burn them out.
Not Eachan MacDougall, she’d convinced herself. He’d not ever think to call them “newcomes” when he was so new to Wilmington himself. He wasn’t part of any faction that she was aware of, so he’d have not made threats in the plural. And, far as she knew, he didn’t have a clue that she’d been snooping—few did beyond her family and the constable. So why had the writer warned them to “call off your bitch”?
The only conclusion she could make was that she had roused suspicions, or fear, when she questioned Anne Moore too closely the day before. Hard as it was to picture, gentle, cultivated Osgoode Moore had seen Jemmy Bowlegs take the discarded gown, and … and set fire to their house to cover his tracks? It still didn’t make sense. Samuel joined her a minute or two later—studiously trying to look above it all.
She went out onto the porch for a breath of air, down to one of the unburned corners, where the paint was still white. Saturday market day, and Dock Street thronged with country-folk, with mongers and pushcarts. She looked down toward the wharves, where the cross-river boats landed, hoping to espy Biddy MacDougall’s lustrous golden mane, or her father’s hackle-feathered bonnet, head and shoulders above the rest.
A file of ten soldiers came marching by, with a handsome young officer in the lead, headed for the docks. With the constable! She raised a hand to wave at Mr Swann, but he merely lifted his hat to her as he passed. The officer smiled and removed his, laid it on his chest below his rank gorget and bowed his head.
Bess bowed her head in reply, blushing at the unexpected attention, trying hard not to smile so broadly
that the young man might misconstrue politeness for … Heavens! He was talking to a sergeant, and coming right up to the porch!
“This is the Livesey household, mistress?” he asked with a glint in his eye.
“It is, sir, but…”
“Leftenant Sturtt, 16th Foot, your humble servant, mistress,” he said, making a formal “leg” to her and clapping his cockaded tricorne to his breast once more. “You are the daughter of a Mr Matthew Livesey, that worthy to whom I had the honor to be introduced at the courthouse not ten minutes past, mistress?”
“I am, sir. Elisabeth Livesey. My brother Samuel,” she said with a giddy feeling as she rose from her curtsey.
“Terrible doin’s, mistress,” he said, scowling at the seared porch. “Your magistrate sent for troops, whilst he concludes his investigation, ma’am. Something to do with a murder, I gather? You must pardon my lamentable ignorance of Wilmington affairs, but Brunswick—and Fort Johnston—is rather removed, I fear. I could post a brace of men to guard your house for the nonce, if you deem such needful.”
“Troops?” Bess frowned. Had things come to that? “No need,” Samuel spoke up, sounding uncommonly gruff. “We’ve our neighbors, after all.”
“Unless, lad, ’twas one them done it, hey?” Lieutenant Sturtt chuckled with a superior expression. “Your father bade me see that the tranquility of his house was protected, sir … Mistress Livesey. I promised I’d see to it personally. Your magistrate, Mr Marsden, is of the opinion that there may be some factional unrest today. Once we’ve made some arrests.” He shrugged in idle speculation.
“Perhaps our businesses, Leftenant Sturtt,” Bess decided. “Do you not think so, Sam’l? Surely not the house again in broad daylight. Arrests?” She started. “What arrests?”
“I will post a man at your business, then,” Sturtt promised. “Where is it?”
“What arrests?” Bess repeated. “Whom?”
“Why …” Sturtt began to reply, but there was some shouting down the street that drew his attention. Then a feminine scream and a harsh bellow of a deep male voice, rising above the undecipherable chorus of a great many people trying to get out of the way—or the angry mutterings of Englishmen instantly outraged by the sight of soldiers exercising any military authority upon free subjects of the Crown.
“You must excuse me, Mistress Livesey,” Sturtt snapped, clapping his hat on his head so quick his powdered hair gave off a puff of flour, and turning his knuckles pale on the hilt of his small-sword as he took it in a firm grasp. With long, impatient strides, he was off the porch and heading down the roadway for the docks, plowing a path through bystanders who didn’t know enough to take sides yet.
“Soldiers, by God!” Samuel muttered darkly, convinced, as everyone else, that a large standing army was an oppressor’s instrument, the armed servants of darkness that should be hidden from sight until a foreign foe threatened. “Redcoat lobster-heads!”
“Och, ye bastards!” the stentorian male voice bellowed louder, even above the rising tumult of the crowd. “Sassenachs!”
“Oh, God, they’ve gone to arrest Mr MacDougall!” Bess cried, clattering down the steps of their stoop to the street.
“Thank bloody Christ, at last!” Samuel muttered, thundering in her wake in spite ofheartfelt misgivings.
“Scots, tae me!” MacDougall cried from the center of a melee, bounded by redcoated, white pipe-clayed soldiery. “Usurpers! Tyrants! Och! Come, laddies, come! Defend th’ right! Will naebody come?”
“Biddy!” Bess screamed to be heard as she neared the melee. “Bess!” Biddy screamed back from the far side. “Och, ma Gawd, Bess! Geet yair father; they’re murderin’ ‘im! Help us!”
Howling and growling, puffing and grunting, part of the mob fell to the ground in a heap, red mostly on top, with Eachan MacDougall beneath, droved pigs squealing and fleeing to the four winds, insulted geese hissing, flapping and pecking at all and sundry to escape.
“Bind him!” Lieutenant Sturtt shouted, emerging from the fracas.
“Garrgh!” MacDougall howled under the press, his face trampled into the sand and muck. Bess skirted the throng to Biddy’s side, and shouted for her again. The girl flung herself into her arms, weeping and shaking like a sapling in a high wind.
“Eachan MacDougall, I take you …” Sturtt puffed for air, his hair awry and his uniform soiled “… in the King’s Name! For the … murder of…” He paused, forgetting who MacDougall was supposed to have killed. He looked to the bruised Constable Swann for help.
“HarryTresmayne!” Swann concluded for him.
“Wot?” Biddy shuddered. “Mr Harry?”
That silenced the crowd a little. People who had been ready to join in on MacDougall’s side as fellow-Scots, those with rocks in their hands eager to punish government brutality—or those with an urge to participate in a good brawl—quieted. The ones closest to the scene had to murmur this startling turn of events to the ones on the fringes, and their comments soughed like a breeze through a pine grove.
“Now for God’s sake,” Bess heard Lieutenant Sturtt mutter harshly to the constable as he found his hat, “let’s frog-march the devil away, before this rabble finds mind enough to make up against us!”
“He ne’er!” Biddywailed. “He ne’er killed anyone, ah swear!”
“Leftenant Sturtt!” Bess called after him. “Wait! You have the wrong man!
“Pardons, mistress,” Sturtt replied, all business now, flirtations forgotten, as he skirted past the pair of them, though his step faltered a bit as he saw Biddy and Bess together, as if trying to make up his mind which of the two he found the most appealing.
“Need redcoats t’buck up yer bottom, Swann?” someone groused from the so-far-subdued mob, reviving their dark mutterings.
“Yair, wot ya got sodgers doin’ th’ magistrate’s work for, hey?” another called out. “Fer shame, man!”
“Got any nutmegs a’tall, Swann?” jeered a third. “Ye skeerto MacDougall, air ye? He have ’em off, last time ye took ‘im?”
The crowd liked the wit of that one, and began to hoot and cry out their appreciation as some of them rediscovered their outrage, and their courage.
“Left ’em home with th’ wife, he did!” a mastiff-faced old woman from the markets crowed, emboldened. “He’s King Roger’s pet ram-cat. Bet Moore had ’em off so he don’t stray!”
While they were chuckling over that bit of wit, someone found the nerve to fling a fresh horse turd at the soldiers, scoring a hit square on the tempting target of the sergeant’s snowy crossbelts in the center of his back. The sergeant swung about, the half-pike with which he had been setting the march pace now held like a weapon, and his face ruddy with rage. But a harsh word from his officer made him face front again and growl, “By the center, quick—march!”
A dozen or so of the worst of the mob flowed up Dock Street behind them, to either side of the way like fearful boarhounds: baying, but not too close, yet.
“Yair Father, Bess!” Biddy reminded her, tugging at her sleeve. “He’ll ken what tae do! Ye told me yair ownself, he’s up-standin’ … folk’ll heed ‘im! Please, Bess!”
“He’s up at the courthouse,” Bess had to confess. “Biddy …”
“Let’s gae thayr, then!” Biddy pleaded, as pale as milk as she gulped for breath. “Ma daddy dinna kill Mr Harry Tresmayne, swear he dinna! Yair father can get him a lawyer, he … Och, o’ course!” Biddy cried, all but slapping her forehead. “Osgoode! Mr Moore, I mean! Och, he’s th’ fine gentleman, an’ th’ quickest lawcourt man of all! Why I dinna think of eet…
Now that’d be interesting! Bess thought, boggling at the idea. She turned red with embarrassment and shame, ready to blurt out how she’d connived and snooped, sure that her delving had caused Mr
MacDougall’s arrest, that her father’s call on the magistrate with the gown and the flowers and ribbon had set all this in motion.
Osgoode Moore, the attorney for Eachan MacDougall? When he was the
better suspect? What help would he render? Bess giddily wondered. If he avoided all suspicion and doomed MacDougall to hang for his own crime by putting up a poor defense, to save his own neck from “Captain Swing’s” noose…
“Sam’l?” Bess said in a terrified croak, putting off the moment when she’d have to confess all to Biddy. “Do you run and fetch Mr Moore to the courthouse.”
“What?” Samuel nearly screeched in astonishment. “But ain’t he …”
“Just go, Sam’l!” Bess snapped. “Please.”
God forgive me, she silently begged, hitching a deep, stiffening breath and taking the distraught Biddy’s hand. “We’ll go to the courthouse, Biddy, to find my father. He’ll straighten this out for you!”
Chapter 27
YE WENT TOO FAR, ye black-hearted rogue,” Mr Marsden mused as he beheld Eachan MacDougall, bound to a hard ladderback chair before his desk. “An’ now, ye’ve murdered Mr Harry Tresmayne.”
“I dinna do eet,” MacDougall growled back, rattling his chains and manacles. Even bound, with a soldier to each side of him, he was still defiant.
“Don’t waste our time, MacDougall, of course ye did,” Marsden accused. “Or don’t ye recall? As oft as Constable Swann an’ his bailiffs been ‘cross the river when ye were in drink? How oft they fetch ye back, everyone bloody from th’ fracas, and ye never recall that the next mornin’, either, hey?”
“I dinna do eet,” MacDougall dully repeated.
“Ye’re a nasty piece o’ work, MacDougall,” Marsden said. “Bane o’ my existence. Hard, brutal… a cold-hearted, violent bit o’ Scot scum. An’ now, ye’re a murderer, to boot!” he taunted.
“Damn yair eyes, Marsden!” MacDougall exploded at last. “Ye an’ all yair redcoats! Yair sort trampled ma country with yair guns an’ slaughter. Pissed on th’ dyin’; och, I seen yair sort do eet! Bayonet th’ wounded, laddies, lassies an’ th’ auld folk t’gether … murtherin’ pris’ners with out a jot o’ mercy! Burnin’ out puir crofters, rapin’ th’ women, an’ laughin’ fit t’bust, why …!”
What Lies Buried: A Novel of Old Cape Fear Page 23
