Buccaneer (6 page)

“No, but John Alston did and called in on his way back.”

“You had letters from England?” She spoke the words lightly, but he knew she was trying to help him.

“My father wrote.”

“Is he well?”

“He is in France with my brother.”

Her eyebrows lifted but otherwise she was motionless. “They have joined the Prince?”

“Probably, but that was not the main reason they fled.”

“What happened?”

“You understand ‘compounding’?”

“I think so. A Royalist is allowed to keep his property if he pays a large sum of money to Cromwell. To Parliament,” she corrected herself.

“Yes, but there is also…well, paying it has a…”

“A stigma? Obviously a man who ‘compounds’ is buying his safety at the price of his honour, no?”

Yorke shrugged his shoulders in the face of such logic: she had a disconcerting way of going to the centre of a problem. “Well, I think so, and apparently my father does. But other Royalist landowners, some of the most powerful, have thought otherwise.”

“They are wrong,” Aurelia said firmly. “What happens when the King returns to the throne?”

Again, Ned shrugged his shoulders. “When will that be? We will be old folk by then.”

Aurelia murmured an answer but as her face was turned away from him he asked her to repeat it, which she did, again without turning her head.

“Look at me, beloved,” Ned said, “at the moment you are talking to the birds outside.”

Then he remembered her hair had not been done in quite the usual style: it was slightly different on the right side.

“Look at me!”

She turned slightly so that he could see her eyes.

He stood up suddenly and walked over to her and, holding her gently by the shoulders, turned her so that he could see the right side of her face.

An angry, reddish-blue bruise covered the ear and part of the throat beneath it. She had tied the knot of her hair more to the right and left more ringlets dangling in an effort to hide it.

“When?” Ned demanded.

“It does not matter,
chéri
; it is nothing. I bruise easily – you know that.”

“What happened?”

“I angered him: it was my fault.”

“How did you anger him?”

“Oh Ned! Please, it is of no importance.”

“Tell me, my love, or I shall ask the servants.”

“You must do no such thing!”

Ned took his hands from her shoulders and turned towards the door.

“No, Ned. It was nothing. He was upset and – well, he had been drinking. He came back from the town, and supper was not ready. Yes, that was it. It made him angry. He was hungry after a busy day.”

He held her shoulders again and forced her to meet his eyes. “Why was he upset?”

“Well, he was not upset at first; he was excited. What I said made him angry, and he hit me. I do not blame him.”

“What did you say?”

“Oh, it is of no importance,
chéri
; please forget it.”

“Was it about me?”

“No!”

She answered too quickly to be convincing. “About Kingsnorth, then?”

“
Peut-être
, but you give it an importance it does not have.”

Ned could now guess what had happened and picture the scene. Wilson had been down at the town yesterday and heard rumours from the captain of the
William and Mary
. He had heard of Penn’s fleet, and he had seen this as bringing him the chance of owning Kingsnorth within a few weeks. On his return home, drunk as usual, he had made some sneering remark to Aurelia.

He pushed her back gently so that she was again sitting on the stool, and said quietly: “I am leaving Kingsnorth tomorrow.”

She went white, then her eyes seemed to be looking up at the beams of the roof, and then she slid to the floor.

Ned was about to shout for help when he realized that she had merely fainted and, he thought angrily, that was hardly surprising considering how crudely he had given her his news. He knelt and supported her head. Two or three minutes later her eyes opened and Ned thought of holding a frightened animal and seeing its eyes.

“Oh Ned, I am so sorry. I suddenly felt unwell. I – yes, help me up, I can stand.” She kicked at a petticoat caught under her heel, and a moment later was again sitting on the stool, her hands clasped.

“Breathe deeply,” he said.

After three or four minutes she said: “You were saying that you are leaving Kingsnorth tomorrow. Do you mean you are leaving the island?”

“Wilson must have told you last night that Cromwell is sending out a fleet against the Spanish. It is due any day, looking for recruits. It will send out pressgangs to force men to serve. And apart from all that, my father warns that they’ll arrest me.”

By now she was holding his hand and bending her head to hide tears.

“So I’ve asked my servants to sail with me and they are loading the
Griffin
with provisions.”

“They agreed to come with you?”

“Most of the men and all the women.”

“Led by the famous Martha.”

He grinned. “Martha led them all, men and women.”

“So now…now you come to say goodbye, Edouard. Or
au revoir
.”

“No. I’ve come to ask you to pack a few clothes in a single bag, with any little treasures you have, and be ready for me to fetch you at noon tomorrow.”

The silence in the house was so complete he could hear a beam creak from the heat of the sun. A finch perched on the window ledge, looking for sugar that Aurelia often sprinkled there. The bird found a few grains lodged in a split in the wood and pecked at them and the tapping alarmed a lizard nearby.

Finally Aurelia looked up at him, but her eyes were shut and brimming with tears. “No, my darling, I cannot come with you. I am married to another man. This you know. I cannot break my marriage vows. We have argued about that so often before.”

“But darling heart, you know why he married you! Your money paid for this plantation and much more. He has broken his marriage vows. Why, even now he is probably with that creole whore of his. And he hits you.”

“But I married him, Edouard. ‘Until death us do part’.”

Even as she spoke they both heard the jingle of harness followed a moment later by Wilson’s harsh voice abusing his manservant Bullock for not being ready to help him from the saddle. At the same moment Mary Bullock ran into the room.

“Oh, ma’am, it’s the master; we didn’t see him coming. He’s hours earlier than usual and –”

The thump of boots interrupted her and Wilson lurched into the room, his face streaming with the perspiration that always bothers heavy drinkers, and his eyes bloodshot.

“Ha, Yorke, here to caress your slut, eh? Or should I say
my
slut?”

He stood a couple of paces inside the door, swaying, looking from Yorke to Aurelia.

“Come, darling, kiss your dutiful husband.”

Aurelia rose from the stool and walked towards him, and as she went to kiss him he slapped her viciously across the face, knocking her down. The violence of the blow and Aurelia’s lightness meant he continued swinging unbalanced and sprawled flat on the floor himself.

Ned ran across the room to Aurelia just as the serving woman was kneeling beside her. The woman was muttering angrily to herself and tugging at something at her waistband, and Ned was appalled to see that she was drawing out a small carving knife.

Hurriedly Ned pressed her hand so that she pushed the knife back out of sight, then they both helped Aurelia to her feet. No sooner had they done that than Ned felt himself flung round by a hand on his shoulder and found himself facing an infuriated Wilson.

“Well, Yorke, cuckolding me in my own house, eh? Well, this time I demand satisfaction. The devil take appointing seconds, so chose your weapons and name a time.”

Ned looked Wilson up and down. The man was swaying like a child’s spinning top in the moments before it toppled. “I would duel only with a gentleman, Wilson, and a sober one at that.”

“Fight, you cowardly cuckolder…cowardly cuckolder,” Wilson repeated drunkenly. “Brave in front of the women, you are, but faced with a real man, you shelter behind their skirts. Now then, sword or pistol? I have a splendid pair of wheel-locks; you can choose which you want and load ’em both. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

His speech was blurred and now almost wheedling, but Ned watched his eyes. They belonged to a man who had been drinking heavily, but they were not the eyes of a drunken man. The eyes of a cunning man, yes; of a man laying a trap.

“Refuse to meet in fair fight, eh? Wait until the island hears about that! Planters don’t like cowards, you know, especially cowards caught in adultery. You don’t think she’s worth you risking your skin, eh?”

He turned to Aurelia. “Well, my dear, perhaps you’ll believe me now. You are a worthless French slut: worthless to me as a wife and worthless to your lover as a mistress. Pardon me, a
former
mistress.”

Aurelia watched, her eyes frightened and moving back and forth from her husband to Ned, who was trying to keep a watch on the serving woman, half expecting any moment to see a flash of steel.

Ned waited because he knew Wilson was by no means finished. The challenge was only the beginning of whatever idea had formed in that cunning brain, and probably the least important part of it. Ned guessed that if he had accepted, naming a weapon, time and place, Wilson would have found a reason at the last moment why he would not fight. Ned knew nothing of the man’s ability as a swordsman, but he had heard that he was such a bad shot that none of his neighbours who valued their lives would invite him when they went dove shooting. And while he waited for Wilson to reveal himself, he could only hope that Aurelia would guess there was a good reason he did not accept the challenge.

“You’ve got to leave the island, Yorke. You don’t know that yet, do you, but I can tell you that you have. Dishonoured, by God!” He spat the words out, years of hatred spilling from his mouth like vomit.

“Leave the island?” Yorke repeated guilelessly. “Why?”

“Why? You ask
why
? I can think of three reasons without any effort!”

“What are they?”

“Well, first, you’re an adulterer; you’ve seduced my wife. Then, you’ve refused a challenge.”

“That’s two.”

“That’s enough. Branded a coward and an adulterer – reasons enough, I should have thought.”

Ned shook his head. “They would clear half the planters off this island, yourself among them.”

“I’m no coward!” Wilson bellowed.

“No, but you’re an adulterer!”

“A black wench on a cool afternoon – that makes me an adulterer, does it?” he sneered.

“I’m not your judge, Wilson.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Wilson said, lowering his voice. “I like you, Yorke, even if you are Royalist. I heard news today that you know nothing about, but I’ll help you out. Now, how many men would help a man who has been cuckolding him for months, if not years? Oh, don’t deny it; I’ve known all about it.”

Ned saw the eyes narrowing. Wilson had known nothing, but now he was guessing and guessing accurately, except the word was – admittedly only due to Aurelia’s scruples – not cuckolding.

“Sell me Kingsnorth, Yorke. I’ll give you double what your family paid. Three thousand pounds. The lawyers can draw up the papers this afternoon and we’ll sign ’em tonight.”

So that was it. Wilson might have been drinking, but the rumbullion had not dulled his cunning.

“Kingsnorth is not for sale.”

“Listen, Yorke, sell to me at that price and I’ll never breathe a word that you refused a challenge. You can stay on in the island. Buy a smaller plantation. Buy a house. Live the life of a gentleman without all the worry of being a planter. You can still see Aurelia. Be discreet, but you can call.”

The man was quick and he was clever. Ned realized that Wilson did not know that a letter from his father had, that morning, warned him that the plantation would be sequestrated as soon as Penn arrived. Wilson was trying to secure Kingsnorth now: buying it so that he did not have to take a chance in the lottery of the sequestration. And he could pay with promissory notes, which would have to be cashed in England, but he knew that long before then Yorke would be a Roundhead prisoner, and no doubt the promissory notes would vanish, so that Wilson would have acquired Kingsnorth quite legally, and at no cost.

“You’ll lose it, you know,” Wilson said, and his voice was now that of a man who was almost sober. “Orders from Parliament arrived in the
William and Mary
. Orders concerning a certain Edward Yorke, younger son of the Earl of Ilex, lately fled to France and whose estates in Kent and Sussex have been sequestrated by Parliament. And…” he said heavily, enjoying what he obviously intended to be the climax, “…and whose estate in Barbados is also forfeit. You own nothing, Yorke, neither you nor your father.”

“Then why do you want to buy Kingsnorth, Walter, if it does not belong to Edouard?” Aurelia asked, her voice quiet and the question spoken in perfect innocence, as though worried on her husband’s behalf.

“Don’t bother yourself with such things, m’dear,” Wilson said heartily. “I just don’t want our friend left penniless. He loses the plantation and the ship, you see. Why, once the governor acts on his orders – which he will do tomorrow, I’m told – Master Edward will be looking for a friendly roof to shelter under. I wish I could offer you hospitality here, but in view of my wife’s French blood, you’ll understand…”

“But Walter,” Aurelia persisted, “if the plantation is being confiscated – or is the word sequestrated? – by the order of Parliament, surely if you buy it, they will take it away from
you
?”

“No, no, they won’t. Now don’t you bother your pretty head.” He turned to Yorke. “What about it, then? Three thousand pounds for the plantation. I’ll leave you the ship. You can get away in her. Sign the papers today – you go back and get the deeds and we’ll ride into Bridgetown together this afternoon.”

Ned realized he was nodding his head, not because he was agreeing with the man but because Wilson’s mind had worked just as he had expected. But Wilson misunderstood the nodding for agreement and seized Ned’s right hand and began shaking it vigorously.