The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1) (9 page)

“Have you been long with the Jackson family? What is
your name?”

“Bennet, sir.” She curtsied, nervously, having no
wish to be cast off in New York after twenty years in service. “I did come as
nursery maid to the mistress before Master George was born, sir, and stayed
with Miss after they died, sir.”

There was room in the quarters for more staff and a
maid would be useful, and would make life easier when it came to putting the
young girl aboard ship.

“Pack your own traps, Bennet. I would wish you to
stay with Miss Amelia until we can arrange for her to go to England. Do you
know of any family the Major has in England? Could I send to them to take her?”

“Sir George would give her houseroom, sir, in
Huntingdonshire.”

“Good. A letter will take six months, I expect, to
get an answer. It would be better to simply send her off on the next convoy.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but do you expect to see
the Major again, sir?”

Tom weighed her up – she seemed not unintelligent,
almost certainly knew enough about the Jacksons’ affairs to be able to put two
and two together. He shook his head.

“Poor lamb! On her own in the world at her age, with
not a penny of her own, I suspects, sir.”

“Nothing, I imagine, Bennet.” Tom responded to her
hint, soothingly. “I will see to your money while you stay here and until you
have taken her home, but after that I don’t know.”

“My brother got a little bit of a farm over towards
Thrapston way, sir. So long as I gets back to England, there’s a bed for me to
lay me head while I looks for a place.”

“Look after Miss and I will make sure you get home,
Bennet. Can I give you the money to get fares on the stage in England, to make
your way from Bristol to Huntingdon? Will you know how to go about it?”

“I been there, sir, to Sir George’s big place. Us
can go cross-country, to Cheltenham and then Oxford town and on to Northampton.
The old Cambridge Flyer passes through Huntingdon, sir, and a gig from the inn
will take us to Sir George. So long as ‘e be in residence, sir – in the Season
‘e’ll be in London, and ‘e might be off for the shooting later on, but in ‘igh
summer and dead winter, ‘e’ll be at ‘ome.”

“August convoy, into Bristol for the beginning of
October at latest. There’ll be a ship of mine to take passage on, so that will
be no problem. Look after her for the next few weeks, if you please.”

“We ain’t safe here no more, Master Tom.”

“Why,
Joseph?”

Tom was unwilling to listen to any prophecy of doom
– he liked New York, loved the profits it held out to him and the easy way of
life of most moneyed people, outside of the uppermost English classes, with
whom he had no wish to mix. There was an imitation of London ‘Society’, for
those of birth and breeding, but he had no wish to become part of that.

“The word will be out soon enough, on how the Major
Jackson died, Master Tom. Eighty men on them wagons, they ain’t all goin’ to
keep their chaffers shut. Some’ll get drunk and some’ll just naturally have to
shout they mouths off and some’ll talk to their ladies. Come the end of next
month, maybe earlier, and the army people are like to be hearin’ just how their
man come to disappear.”

“There won’t be any proof, Joseph.”

“They won’t look for no court case, Master Tom. They
maybe not got much time for that Captain Dawson, but he army, and you ain’t,
and they looks after their own. They has a quiet word with the other sergeants
in they camp, and says as how you was the one topped their brother … well, I
don’t reckon either you or me lives too long after that.”

“Colonel Miller makes his delivery in, what, three
more days?”

“He do, and the ship makes her berth the day after
that.”

“What do you think then, Joseph? Should we go back
to England on her?”

“No, boss, the word might go soon after. I bin’
lookin’ at maps and talking about. We takes cabins up to Halifax in Lower
Canada, and then we changes ship there and goes to Glasgow in Scotland, not to
London or Bristol at all, they’s a lot of Scots men in Canada, always got ships
on that run, and from there we buys a little carriage of our own and we drives
south to someplace where we starts up again in business, trading or whatever –
we disappears from New York and then we vanishes from Halifax and then we ain’t
no place to be seen in Scotland – it’ll need some real bad luck to find us
after that.”

“What about the money from this season’s trading,
how do we lay our hands on that?”

“Sell it in New York, Master Tom – ‘assign it’, the
cargo that is, while it’s still on the sea – they’s two or three men would take
it off our hands for say a cut of ten parts in the hundred. We take their Trade
Bills and lose about five per cent discounting them and we’re away clear.”

Tom took up his pencil, never as fast with his
arithmetic, even on paper, as Joseph was in his head.

“Gives us about five thou’ gross on the deal. Time
we’ve paid Miller and got clear it leaves us with about twenty-six thou’ cash
in hand.”

“You reckon Miss Jenny wants to come with us, Master
Tom?”

“Doubt it, Joseph, I reckon she likes America too
much – back in England she’d just be a whore, here she’s got every chance of
turning respectable if she wants.”

“When you goin’ to tell her we goin’, Master Tom?”

Tom met Joseph’s stare, challenging him; after a
couple of seconds he nodded.

“The morning we go, I think, Joseph. The rent on
this place is paid up till next spring, she can take it over till then. What do
you reckon, drop her a couple of hundred out of our money?”

“That enough to keep her comfortable till she picks
up with another man, Master Tom, and she won’t have time enough to sell us out
if she don’t know nothing.”

“Right. Same for Bob, I think, nothing to be said.
No need to pay him anything, he’s made his cut, fair and square – perhaps he’ll
take up with Jenny, they seem friendly.”

Joseph laughed, shook his head at Tom’s naivety. “He
a friend of hers because she knows he won’t never try to get a hand up her
skirts, Master Tom – he got a young feller about the same age as you what keeps
he bed warm at night.”

“What, you mean …?”

“Yep, just that!”

“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.