The Saintly Buccaneer (34 page)

Now sitting before his family, it was all Charles could do to hold back the tears, but he was a Winslow. He said adamantly, “We will not give up. We’ll spend every penny, pull every string! I will have my son back again!”

Dorcas stared at her husband, for she had never seen him so determined. Neither had his mother. Martha Winslow had always known that Charles was not a man of character—that was why she had hated her stepson Adam. Now she said quietly, “God keep you strong, son!”

Dorcas stared at her husband incredulously, and then Charles drew himself up and repeated quietly but with an intensity that had never manifested itself in his life: “I will have my son back again!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE GATHERING OF THE CLAN

“Get up! Get up!” The guard’s voice echoed in the filthy hold of the frigate
Mantigo.
Paul gathered his belongings and joined the line of prisoners that waited for the door to open. The voyage from New York to Plymouth had been slow, for the ship was old. He had not complained, but others who had found the moldy ship’s biscuit and rotten beef uneatable were chastised.

A short, muscular seaman with tattoos everywhere but his face laughed gruffly at them. “Yer don’t like this grub? Wait till yer gets to Dartmoor! This’ll look like a piece of cake! Why, a fine, prime rat goes for ten shillin’s, and no lack of bidders!”

They were taken to the berth deck, then put ashore in a drizzle of cold October rain that seemed to freeze the marrow of Paul’s bones. In spite of the early hour as they passed through the town, they found themselves surrounded by drunken sailors out of grog shops, old women carrying jugs of ale and baskets full of cakes, fried eels and boiled sheep’s heads. Devon farmers in corduroy breeches and red vests that dropped halfway down their fat thighs stared at the ragged prisoners, colorless from the lack of sun.

The escort was a troop of Devonshire militiamen. As they left the city the wind roared down the abrupt roadways, and rain began to soak their tattered garments. It beat the road
into a brown river of mud that sucked at their feet; and when one of the prisoners fell, he was prodded to his feet, shivering in every joint.

All morning they plodded, laboring up range after range of the rolling hills until finally, just when Paul was about ready to drop, they came to a long hill. Its top was lost in fog and rain, and there were massive granite-like knobs jutting out, as if God had stuck it together as an afterthought.

He caught the word “Dartmoor,” and asked one of the round-faced militiamen, “Is this Dartmoor?”

“Aye, Dartmoor” was the answer. They crawled like blind insects upward until finally late in the afternoon they came to a halt; there below was a circular mass of granite, a sort of giant millstone. Paul stared down at it, then lurched drunkenly down the slope, a mud-caked scarecrow, not caring much whether he lived or died.

Prodded by the militiamen, the bedraggled group entered the huge gate and was immediately surrounded by guards with muskets. Soon the troop escort from Devon was on its way back to the coast, and a florid-faced, hook-nosed man with tiny eyes and a cruel mouth came to look at the prisoners. After a quick glance he snorted, “What’s Snyder thinkin’ of to send me a hundred prisoners—and me with nine thousand crammed in like sardines? Well, give them hammocks, blankets and mattresses. Oh, mess equipment, too, and spun yarn for slingin’ their hammocks.”

After receiving their gear, they stumbled forward, pushed by the sharp bayonets of the guards. Paul expected Dartmoor to be a warren of small cells, but suddenly he was pushed into an enormous room, with colonnades of slender posts extending from floor to ceiling along the length of it. Everywhere men were squatting around kettles in groups of six—eating, drinking, laughing, and shouting. Among them were flickering candles whose beams seemed to make their garments and faces appear yellow.

The newcomers were pushed into the room, most of them
falling instantly to the floor, exhausted. Even as they fell, Paul saw the old prisoners begin to creep toward them, and a skeleton of a man began to go through the pockets of one of the new arrivals.
Got to stay on my feet!
he thought.
If I go down, they’ll take all I have.
He had a knapsack stuffed with food and trading items, given to him by Burns the last time they’d met.

“Hang on to this, Hawke,” Burns warned, calling him by his old name. “Ye’ll need it in Dartmoor—and do nae give up on God!”

The words echoed in Paul’s mind, but as he staggered around the hellish room, he almost thought that God had given up on
him.
But just when he was about to collapse, he felt a hand on his arm. He whirled around to fight off an attack—and found himself looking into the face of Daniel Greene!

“I’ve been looking for thee, Friend Paul,” he greeted with a smile that gleamed in the semidarkness. “We got word of the trial—and I figured they’d send thee here.”

“Dan? You’re here?” Paul’s mind was blurred, and the words came from his lips in a slur.

“Here, come with me—thee is about past going.”

He took Paul’s arm with a powerful hand and steered him to a stone stairway, then into a room filled with faces. He recognized some of the men—Thad Alden and Laurence Conrad among them. Weeding their way through the mass of humanity, Dan finally pushed Paul into a corner where he fell onto a straw-stuffed mattress and passed into unconsciousness.

It was no lighter when he awoke. He rubbed his eyes, trying to get his bearings. Fear gripped his confused mind as he began to remember. He sat up quickly and heard a voice. “Well, sir, you’ve finally come out of it. I thought you were waiting for the general resurrection of the dead!”

Paul squinted in the dimness and found the long face of Laurence Conrad peering at him. The tall man was even more
cadaverous than Winslow remembered. “Have some grub,” he offered, and then with his usual mixture of pessimism and cheer, remarked, “If it don’t kill you, boy, it’ll keep you alive for a time.”

Paul found he was ravenous, and gobbled down the food without inquiring into the contents. He drank tepid water from a stone jug, taking huge gulps before setting it down. Ashamed at his crude manners, he said, “Well, thanks for the food, Laurence. I guess I was pretty hungry.”

“Might as well get used to that,” Laurence stated. “You’ll spend most of your time trying to find grub.” He nodded at the knapsack. “I kept an eye on your kit—and you’d better do the same.”

Paul looked around and asked, “All of you in here—you’re from
The Gallant Lady?
”

“Most of us—the rest are from our part of America. We don’t trust each other much—but we don’t trust anybody else at all.”

“Well, if you hadn’t helped me, that food would have been gone—so it belongs to the crew—all of you. And I’d like to be a part of it—if the men will have me.”

Conrad stared at him with a peculiar intensity. Then he shook his head and remarked dryly, “Just when I convince myself that mankind is no blasted good—totally depraved—somebody like you has to come along and ruin my theology.”

Dan Greene came over to the corner and sat down beside Conrad. “Well, thee is among the living again,” he nodded to Paul.

“Maybe, but he’s not in his right mind,” Laurence answered with a shrug. “He just donated all his goods to our little group.”

Greene gave Paul a thoughtful look. “Well, two is better than one—and a threefold cord is not easily broken.” He slapped Paul on the shoulder, saying, “I’m sorry thee is here—but in this place no man can live without friends.”

Paul was embarrassed, and replied nonchalantly, “Why,
it’s nothing. I’m grateful to you.” He picked up the bag and hefted it. “There’s gold in here—courtesy of Angus Burns.”

“Gold! Good Lord!” Laurence exclaimed in a low voice. “Don’t say a word to anybody, man!”

Paul looked at him strangely and asked, “Gold is rare here?”

“It’ll get you anything you want,” Conrad divulged. “Even a woman, so they say.”

“Not anything, Laurence,” Greene broke in. “It won’t get you freedom.”

Paul gave him a searching look. “I—I’d hoped it would help make an escape possible.”

Conrad and Greene exchanged quick glances and Greene commented, “We wondered how long it’d take before thee got to that.”

“We all get to that point, Winslow,” Conrad explained. “But it won’t pay to dwell on the subject. Nobody gets out of here alive.”

“Nobody? Not even one or two?”

Greene stared at Paul and shook his head. “Well, there were a couple of cases—or so I’m told. But they all had one thing in common.”

Paul waited for him to finish, and when he hesitated, Winslow inquired, “What did they have in common, Dan?”

Greene bit his lip and shrugged his shoulders. “They all had plenty of help from the outside—wealthy friends who were willing to pay any price to get them sprung. Which leaves all of us out, Paul.”

“You have any relatives with a fortune they’d like to throw away on your worthless carcass, Winslow?” Conrad regarded the younger man with interest. “Your newfound father—he’s got money, hasn’t he?”

Paul thought of Charles Winslow, but he shook his head.

“No.” He knew that as a Tory, the Americans would have frozen Winslow’s assets, if not actually seizing them. “No, there’s nobody out there who’d be able to redeem me.”

Greene and Conrad heard the sadness beneath his steady tone, and Conrad said softly, dropping a friendly hand on Paul’s shoulder, “Well, the good part of it is, my boy, if we die in this place, we won’t have to go out and fight another war with the lousy British for our freedom, will we now?”

Greene was more sober, and urged, “It’s no good thinking about freedom, Paul. I’ve found that out in the short time I’ve been here. The old-timers have lots of stories about men that go crazy thinking all the time about getting out. The way to beat this thing is just to ride with it. This war will end, and then they’ll let us go.”

“Not me,” Paul informed them. “My sentence is for life—the penalty for treason.” He stood up and looked around at the mass of men in the cell and remarked, “The rest of you have a chance of getting out of here. I have none. So I won’t be able to stop thinking about escape.”

“God help you, my boy,” Conrad nodded sadly. “For nobody else will.”

Winslow stood up and surveyed the cell, then walked to the end and gazed out on the massive room that held the rest of the prisoners, noting the thin, mean, pock-marked faces. There were ugly features, gray-looking even in the yellow light of the candles, and gaunt. All wore yellow rags and some nothing but a piece of cloth twisted around their loins.

He came back to stand before his two friends, and stated quietly, “I may go to hell when I die—but I’ll die before I spend the rest of my life in this hell on earth.” His lean face grew utterly serious and he added, “There’s nobody out there who can help me—so I’ll have to do it myself.”

****

Paul had no way of determining that a small group across the sea had already come together, bent on getting him out of Dartmoor. Originally they had not met with the purpose of getting him free, but rather to ease another Winslow out of the world.

Charity had been drawn into the world of Charles Winslow’s family almost against her will. She discovered that her own life was empty, and after several days of cleaning the old house on the sea, she welcomed a message from Charles: “My mother is ill. Could you help Anne and Dorcas with her?”

She had gone at once, and found her services almost hysterically welcomed. It was obvious that Martha Winslow was dying, and neither of the women knew what to do—in fact, they were both stricken with fear at the coming event. They had almost grabbed at Charity when she arrived, and from that time both of them depended on her desperately.

After two days, Charles came into his mother’s room where Charity was sitting beside her, reading the Bible aloud. He sat down, his foot much better but still tender; and when she paused, he waved her on. She was reading in the Gospels, and his gaze never left her face. When she finally put the Bible on the table, he remarked, “You’ve been a blessing, Charity. I was afraid for Dorcas and Anne. They have no experience in this sort of thing. You’re so calm. How did you learn to handle sickness and death?”

She bit her lip and answered quietly, “At Valley Forge. I don’t like to think about that time. Every day—almost every
hour
—men died, most of them just boys. I never got used to it, but I learned to last through it.”

Charles put his hand on his mother’s and murmured, “She’s going to die, isn’t she?”

“I think so, Charles.” The elderly woman had been ill for a long time, but a week earlier she’d been found unconscious on her bedroom floor, struck down by a stroke, they assumed.

“I’ve sent for Adam. He should be here any time.” He looked at the Bible and asked, “Do you read the Bible to her often? She doesn’t hear you, does she?”

“I don’t really know, but when my brother Curtis was dying at Valley Forge, Julie would read to him for hours as he lay in a coma. When he woke up, I think it had somehow been... heard. It sounds odd, but Julie said there’s a verse
that reads: ‘The
entrance
of thy word giveth light.’ She told me that just
hearing
the Bible is a good thing. I hope so.”

“All my brother’s family are godly people—as you are, Charity.” A painful light touched his eyes and he whispered, “I wish now I’d been more attentive to such things.”

“It’s not too late,” Charity encouraged, adding hastily, “No, I’m not a Christian, Charles. When my father died, I cursed God. I’m not like Julie. But like you, I wish I were.”

They sat silently for a long time, listening to the faint, labored breathing of Martha, punctuated by the sound of the ticking of a clock on the mantel. Finally Charles rose. “She keeps asking for Adam, have you noticed? Every time she regains consciousness, she asks for him.”

“Yes. I hope he comes soon, Charles. I don’t think she can last long.”

Adam did come, early the next morning. His wife Molly was with him, and so were Nathan and Julie. There was a quiet meeting in the parlor, and all of them embraced Charity exactly as they did Anne. It did funny things to her heart and made her eyes sting with tears. She had no family, but somehow they had made her a part of theirs. Julie saw her tears and plopped Christmas down in Charity’s lap. “There! You take care of this fat wad! He’s almost worn me down.” Julie was expecting again, and for the next two days Charity became a key member of the Winslow family. She helped Cory with the food and beds, she tended to Christmas, who was into everything that wasn’t tied down, and she cared for Martha.