Captain in Calico

by George MacDonald Fraser

  Still, the Governor had been left with the conviction that the sooner he and Kate were wed the better, and to assure her agreement without delay he had suggested the trip to England. She had received the proposal eagerly, and they had left New Providence only a few hours before the arrival there of a sloop bearing the news of the attack on the Star. Thus when they sighted Jamaica they were in complete ignorance of what had befallen Rackham since his flight from Providence.

  Rogers at least was not in ignorance for long. Within minutes of their reception at King’s House in St Jago, the residence of the Governor, Sir Nicholas Lawes, he heard the full tale of the Kingston’s capture and the subsequent trial from Sir Nicholas himself. His immediate reaction was one of satisfaction: here was the pestilent Rackham about to be dealt with once and for all, and Rogers could further congratulate himself on his shrewdness in having sent his cargo of silver to Charles Town instead of to Port Royal. He had called himself an over-cautious old woman at the time, changing his plans at the last minute and sending the Star off as a blind to any evil-doers who might have got word of the treasure shipment: well, he had been wrong to reproach himself. His precaution had been justified.

  To sober his satisfaction came the thought that while Rackham was to swing for his crimes, the less Mistress Kate knew of it the better. She might, Rogers brooded, feel pity for the damned rascal. He reassured himself that the topic was not one likely to be introduced in Sir Nicholas’s drawing room during their stay, and in this he was right, but there were other rooms in King’s House besides the drawing room.

  On that first evening Mistress Sampson took the notion for a walk in the gardens for which King’s House was famous. She would have preferred to go alone, but one of Sir Nicholas’s aides offered to escort her and she could hardly refuse him. Once in the garden, however, and having no wish to be burdened by his conversation, she dispatched the young gallant for her shawl, and continued her stroll alone, drinking in the heady fragrance of the bougainvillea which cast its heavy scent over the pleasant enclosure.

  Her path ran beside the verandah which surrounded the house, so that anyone following it was within a few feet of the windows of the rooms on that wing. She had stopped to admire a bloom and was about to walk on when she heard a voice speaking from almost directly above her head. Looking up, she saw that she was opposite one of the windows, that the shutters stood slightly ajar, and that the voice was coming from the lighted room beyond.

  It was a young voice, loose and loud with liquor, and she recognised it as that of one of the Governor’s aides, a swarthy youth named Phipps who had been in attendance that afternoon when they arrived. She would have moved on out of earshot, and had actually taken the first step when that thick voice froze her to a standstill and the blood drained from her face as she listened.

  ‘So they may hang Captain Calico and his rogues as high as they please, but you can lay to it they won’t stretch Mistress Bonney’s lovely neck. And a damned shame if they did, too; there are a thousand better uses for so fine a piece of she-flesh. Am I right, Miles?’

  She heard a snigger of agreement and the clink of a bottle and glass, and only then did the full import of what Phipps had said come home to her. She could not fail to recognise the allusion to Captain Calico; there was only one man in the world he could have meant, and that was the man she had once promised to marry two long years ago and whom she had seen only once since for a brief and painful moment on the Fort roof at New Providence. Horrified and trembling she found herself holding with both hands to the edge of the verandah and straining her ears to listen.

  A younger voice was speaking now, a sober voice. ‘I don’t understand. Is this the woman that was condemned with the pirates this morning?’

  ‘Condemned, and pleaded her belly to ‘scape the gallows,’ supplied Phipps.

  ‘But then, surely she must hang … when the child is born?’ The words were said with distaste. ‘And again, I’ve heard it said that many condemned women will … er, plead their bellies whether they are with child or not. Perhaps this may be the case here.’

  ‘Perhaps indeed,’ said Phipps with mock solemnity. ‘But I doubt if there’s a physician in Jamaica bold enough to thwart Bernard by publishing it abroad that she’s not pregnant. Eh, Miles?’

  ‘Bad business for him if he did,’ agreed a third voice. ‘Find himself out of practice in no time. That at least. Most likely something worse.’

  Phipps let out a hiccoughing laugh. ‘I’ll give five to two that Mistress Bonney don’t sleep alone to-night. Nor she won’t be in a cell at Fort Charles, neither.’

  ‘But … but …’ It was the young voice again. ‘I don’t believe it. You make game of me.’

  ‘Nonsense, my lad,’ cried Miles. ‘If you don’t believe us, ask the others, but don’t ask too loud. It’s as Phipps said: Bernard’ll make her his mistress for as long as it suits him – if she’s half the Venus they say.’

  ‘But … a woman that is to hang?’

  ‘Bah! She’ll not hang,’ scoffed Phipps. ‘Bernard’s not so ungenerous as that. These nine others will swing to-day week and Mistress Bonney will be reprieved pro tempore and then time’ll pass and she’ll be forgotten.’ He sighed gustily. ‘And why not? It would be a mean-hearted brute that would waste a body like that by hanging it.’

  ‘But the law? The Governor?’

  Phipps roared with laughter. ‘Why, man, Bernard is the law! And as for Sir Nick, why, he won’t know and if he did it’s odds he wouldn’t care. Ye see how it is – Jamaica is very much like England, and he stands best who stands highest, for he may do what the devil he pleases. Why, Bernard would hardly have to send word to the fort commandant to-night; old Coates would have the wench on her way to Bernard’s house faster than you can say knife.’

  ‘It would be worth his while,’ mused Miles. ‘Daresay Bernard will toss a few crowns to him for services rendered. Wonder if it’s true that Coates stands to attention at the sound of two guineas chinking together?’

  ‘God help him if he ever has to exist on his pay,’ said Phipps. ‘I’ve heard – why, what in God’s name was that?’

  It took that exclamation to make Kate realise that a voice farther up the garden was calling her name. The aide had found her shawl and was now seeking its owner. She had stood motionless in the shadow by the verandah listening, but now, with the footsteps of her escort crunching towards her over the gravel, she had no choice but to move into the open.

  She hurried back along the path and almost ran headlong into the arms of the aide who came bearing her shawl in triumph. He would have explained at length the details of his search, but she cut his apology short as politely as she could and expressed the wish to go indoors as the night had become too cold. As he took her arm, murmuring his concern, she heard the shutters creak and Phipps’ voice grumbling vaguely into the darkness.

  The details of what took place in the interval between her return to the house and the moment when her maid blew out the candle and closed her bedroom door were never clear to her afterwards. She recalled Sir Nicholas’s concern when she made her excuses, pleading a headache or some such triviality, but that was all. She wanted to be alone, to think, and from what she had seen of King’s House she realised that the only way to ensure privacy was to retire for the night.

  She lay in bed, gazing up at the dim ceiling, recollecting what she had heard and trying to determine what it meant to her. Rackham was to die; he was to be hanged within a week, and the very thought passing through her head seemed to strip her of self-possession and leave her weak and helpless. It was impossible, she told herself; people did not just die – not people like him, who was so young, and full of strength and the very power of living. She knew she should be sorry, because he had been closer to her than any man she had ever known, and yet sorrow was not the emotion she felt. She no longer loved him, of that she was certain, for she could look back now with dispassion and even self-disdain at those kisses stolen in her father
’s garden years ago. But to think of him dying was fantastic and unreal and horrible.

  ‘They may hang Captain Calico as high as they please’ – she could hear the tipsy voice, and at the mere memory she felt sick and miserable. There was a tiny, nagging thought at the back of her mind that perhaps she could not disclaim responsibility for his downfall, but she drove it away with the answer that all that had happened between them had been long ago, that he had left her and not she him, and that no one had the right to reassert a claim voluntarily forgone for two whole years. And yet the thought returned: was she to blame? How far it was the cause of the sick agony possessing her she did not know, but it stayed to torment her. She told herself that there was nothing now that she could do, and that she was suffering from a shock that had left her distraught. Common sense insisted that fate had run its course and there was nothing to be done but strive to put the matter away and hope that in time she might forget it all. Of course, that was impossible, and it seemed to imply cowardice, and Kate Sampson’s soul revolted at the thought.

  Back and forth, one way or another, she lay brooding while she heard the hours told away by the chiming of a clock in the house below, and always her thoughts approached, and rejected, and came closer and closer to a resolution, and on that she fell asleep.

  It said much for her strength and spirit that in spite of the shock she had received and the problem with which it left her, Kate’s bearing and manner were as serene as ever throughout the following day. And in the evening, at the grand reception given in her honour and Woodes Rogers’, she endured with perfect graciousness the ponderous attentions and trivial small-talk of an endless succession of notables and their wives. It seemed to her an eternity before all was done and the last guest had departed, and she could have cried with relief at the prospect of being private again, but even now she was not to escape unchallenged. She was mounting the staircase, having paid a hurried good-night to Sir Nicholas and Rogers, when she heard her name called. She turned with an impatience which melted a little when she saw that the caller approaching across the hall was Master Tobias Dickey. He was accompanied by a tall, portly officer in the uniform of the local garrison.

  ‘We’re barely in time, after all,’ said Tobias, as he bent over her hand. ‘Ye see us, child, slaves tae duty while the rest of the world plays itself. Ma’am, may I present Colonel Coates, who commands Fort Charles? Mistress Sampson.’

  Kate inclined her head to the officer, who was bending his large body almost double in his bow. Coates, she was wondering, and then she remembered where she had heard the name before. It had been only last night, outside the aides-de-camp’s quarters. Coates had been named as the corrupt official who would sink his duty to oblige Chief Justice Bernard in the matter of Anne Bonney; he would have the power, of course, to permit her being taken out of prison and back again.

  It was not a pleasant recollection, and as she looked at him she was forced to mask her distaste. He was a moonfaced creature with a pendulous nose and a large mouth open in a fruity smile; there was the hint of a leer in his eyes which made her automatically raise her fan to shield the deep neckline of her gown. He spoke in a sonorous voice that matched his heavy features.

  ‘I count myself fortunate that I am in time to pay my devotion at Beauty’s shrine,’ he smirked. ‘Everywhere the talk is of the fair visitor Governor Rogers has brought to us from the Bahamas. They speak as of a goddess, which is no less than justice. Ma’am, your most humble obedient.’

  It was the sort of laboured compliment she had heard a thousand times, but this man contrived to make it embarrassing. His large, moist hand retained her own for just a moment more than was necessary and she felt as though she were touching an unpleasantly plump reptile. Tobias, who saw most of what went on around him, sensed her unease and hastened to the rescue.

  ‘The Colonel here has been at me this whole day seeking an introduction,’ he explained. ‘Ye’ll mind I’m lodging in Fort Charles, and since he’s commandant he has me completely in his power.’ He wagged his head in mock solemnity. ‘My work must wait while we come gallivanting out here. And work, did I say? Child, that man that is to be your husband has not an element of humanity about him. Here am I poring over papers down at the fort yonder – all in the interests of government, mark me – when I should be taking my ease in this island paradise.’ He spread his hands. ‘Is there any justice in it?’

  ‘You shall have your reward in heaven,’ she smiled.

  ‘In heaven? That’s as may be. Could I not have a wee bit in Port Royal?’

  She turned to Colonel Coates. ‘And your attendance is most gratifying, sir. How unfortunate that your duties did not permit you to attend earlier. We have been very gay here.’

  ‘Ma’am, it shall be my lifelong regret,’ he assured her. ‘But perhaps we may be honoured with your presence at the fort during your time here. As Master Dickey says, we have little time for leisure, but you may be certain of the most cordial welcome we are able to offer. Depend upon it, ma’am.’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ said Dickey. He gave her a shrewd look. ‘Ye look a wee thing weary, child. I doubt ye’ll have had a yawn or two behind your fan the night. Too much excitement and entertainment and whatnot, when ye should have been snug in your bed.’ He chuckled. ‘Hech! I would have made the bonny minister, rebuking youthful folly. Ye cannae kill the Covenanter once he’s in you. But come, Colonel.’ He took Coates by the arm. ‘You and me’ll just leave Mistress Sampson to her rest. Good-night, m’dear, and sleep sound.’

  She watched them go across the hall and waited until they were out of sight before she continued to her room. Perhaps it was the knowledge that Dickey would be at the fort, within reach if need be, that crystallised her decision for her, or it may have been that Coates’ invitation provided some excuse, but she knew that the problem that had stayed with her all that day had really been solved as soon as it had confronted her. For within herself she had known since the moment that she had heard Phipps’ voice outside the aides’ quarters that she would go to Fort Charles and see Rackham if it were humanly possible. There was no logical reason that could compel her to go to a man who was a few short footsteps from eternity, simply because she had cared for him long ago: she only knew that she could not sit by and wait and then pass on into her new life without having done what the voice inside Kate Sampson told her must be done.

  She did not lie awake that night, but fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow, and did not stir until dawn.

  19. THE PRICE OF PIRACY

  They had removed Rackham’s chains on his return to the cell under Fort Charles, which meant that he could turn over in his sleep without being awakened by the fetters tugging at his wrists. For the rest his liberty was no wider than it had been before: he could walk round the long, narrow cell and look out through the barred window, and he could listen to his comrades in the big common cell along the passage. Most of the time he listened; it was the only thing that provided a distraction from his thoughts, and he did not care to think too much.

  The removal of his fetters had been accompanied by another even more important improvement. During his captivity before the trial the only human being he had seen had been the stone-faced soldier who brought his food and never volunteered a remark or vouchsafed more than a grunt to Rackham’s questions. Now the soldier had been replaced by an impish little warder who prattled incessantly while he was in the cell and never lost an opportunity of reminding Rackham that if he wished he could now buy extra food and liquor and even female company. When Rackham pointed out that he had no money the warder grinned slyly.

  ‘What yer got in yer mouth, matey, eh?’ He chuckled at Rackham’s surprised expression. ‘Regular trapful o’ money, if I’m a judge. Yer teeth, matey, yer teeth. Fine sound choppers like them’ll fetch a guinea or two if ye can find the right buyer. I could do that for yer, pal – for a consideration, o’ course. Just say the word an’ I’ll find the customers. Any amount o’ gennlemen �
�� aye, an’ ladies, too – what’d give a sight o’ money for teeth like them.’

  ‘You mean when I’m dead?’

  ‘Well, no, ‘cos yer out o’ my ‘ands then, d’ye see? ‘Sides, the best people ain’t so partial to usin’ corpse teeth. Upsets their appetites, I s’pose. But if you was to give me your word to let the armourer nip ’em out, say the day afore you do the ‘angman’s ‘ornpipe, I’d be ‘appy to give yer credit in the meantime. Say two guineas? It’s stark profit, matey. What the ‘ell use they goin’ to be to you where you’re goin’?’ he added frankly. ‘An’ think wot the guineas’ll buy you – fruit, an’ a bottle o’ the best, an’ I knows of a lovely little yellow girl as you can ‘ave cheap as dirt. Wot say, pal?’

  Rackham had refused, not because he particularly wanted his teeth but because he did not want the fruit or the wine or the highly admired yellow girl. The warder had borne his refusal without disappointment; from the noise that could be heard down the passageway Rackham judged that he had found a more fruitful field for his commercial activities there. Several times he heard drunken singing and the shrill laughter of women mingling with the husky roaring of the prisoners, and occasionally there would arise a tumult of angry voices and fighting, which would bring the sergeant of the guard to restore order.

  The little jailer was persistent, however; he was not the one to spoil a profitable transaction for want of salesmanship, and he had even more ambitious plans in view, as Rackham learned next day.

  ‘I’ve brought yer somethin’, matey,’ the jailer confided. ‘See ‘ere.’ And he held out a razor on his grubby palm.

  Rackham looked at it without interest. ‘What’s that for? D’ye want me to cut my own throat?’

  The jailer laughed uneasily. ‘Ye wouldn’t do that, pal, now would yer? They’d string me up in yer place, like as not. ‘Ere, take it. Ye can tidy yerself up a bit, like, if yer so minded. Seems to me ye must be heart sick o’ wearin’ them lousy whiskers.’