Buccaneer (7 page)

“That’s fine, man, and now we’re shaking hands on it! Bravo, you’ve done yourself a good –”

Suddenly Aurelia was tearing their hands apart and, eyes blazing, she was saying to Wilson in a cold, bitter voice: “Not only are you a bully whose only pleasure is whipping his wife, but you are a liar and a thief, and now you plan to be a cheat!”

Ned caught Wilson’s swinging fist with both hands and thrust Aurelia to one side with his body. As soon as she was out of range of the man’s reach, Ned held Wilson’s jerkin and stared into the red-rimmed eyes.

“Whipping?” he whispered, the word choking in his throat.

Wilson’s eyes dropped. “Of course not. She’s hysterical.”

Ned, afraid he would strangle the man as he felt waves of red anger spurting through his body, pushed him away just as Aurelia said calmly, “Yes, whipping me. Every night, when he is sober enough. It’s his only pleasure. His black woman whips
him
.”

Wilson gave a sudden desperate bellow of pain and collapsed face downward at Ned’s feet, the black wooden handle of a knife sticking out from the fleshy part of his right shoulder.

The serving woman, Mary Bullock, was standing behind where he had been. Now she had her arms crossed and a grim look on her face. “I did that orl
wrong
,” she said angrily, “’is ’eart, if ’e’s got one, is on the uvver side, ain’t it?”

By now Wilson was roaring with pain and surprise and Ned knelt beside him. “Keep still. Don’t turn over.”

He tore away the jerkin and saw the knife blade, narrow and obviously short, had sunk into muscle: the woman would have been hard put to pick another place where the blade would have done so little damage.

“Get some clean cloth and some water,” Ned told her. “I can pull it out without harm.”

“Not me, sir,” the woman said. “You pull it out and I’ll stick it back in again! Many’s the night my husband and I ’ave ’eard ’im whipping the lady. Why, he’s such an ’ard cruel man I’ve carried that knife since I first come ’ere.”

Wilson groaned. “Someone fetch the surgeon! I’m dying while you fools gossip!”

“You’re not dying; you’re barely scratched,” Yorke said quietly. “But seeing the knife gives me an idea. No one knows you came back early…”

Aurelia looked down at him, horror-stricken, and Ned slowly winked.

“…we could do the job properly, bury you at the other end of the estate as soon as it’s dark, and sail in the
Griffin
tomorrow.”

“No, no, you’d never do that,” Wilson gasped. “Listen,” he pleaded, “I’ll see the governor; I’ve influence with him and the Assembly. I’m sure I could get the sequestration order overlooked. How about that, Edward?”

Mary, who still had not moved, said firmly: “Either he’s dead or my husband and I are quit of this island by sundown.” With that she left the room, to return a few moments later holding an even larger knife, and Ned knew she had no fear about using it.

“We have reached an
impasse
, Wilson. You have a knife sticking in your back which I can remove with no trouble to me and very little pain to you. But that leaves us with a wounded Walter Wilson who in an hour will be full of rumbullion and bellowing for vengeance.”

“No, no really. It’s not painful. If you’ll just remove it, I promise I will say nothing as long as you promise not to repeat anything you’ve heard or said this afternoon.”

Ned looked again at the wound. The man was flabby and the blade had gone through an inch of fat before entering the muscle. There was very little bleeding.

He looked at the two women and gave another deliberate wink.

“I’ll be honest with you, Wilson. If you move, you might cut some vital organ. So you must lie still while we prepare your bed and have everything ready for removing the knife.”

“But a surgeon…it’s a job for a surgeon!”

“Where is the surgeon? Be sensible! McFarlane will be blind drunk by now, and he lives down by South Point, beyond Christchurch. That’s ten miles at least. Twenty miles of riding. He’ll be in a sorry state by the time he gets here. However, you choose.”

“Very well, you remove it, but for God’s sake be careful!”

“I will,” Ned said, standing up and gesturing to the two women to follow him out of the room.

He went out through the front door and kept on walking until the three of them were thirty yards from the house, and he saw Mary’s husband hurrying to join them. He decided to wait for him, to avoid saying everything twice.

As soon as Ned had described the fracas which had led to Mary sticking the kitchen knife in Wilson’s back, the man looked at his wife in amazement and to Ned’s surprise seized her and gave her a smacking kiss. “Killed him, did yer, lass? Oh, Mary, I’m so proud!”

“Nay, I got mixed up on which side his ’eart is.”

The man’s face fell. “Then he’s still alive in there?”

Ned interrupted. “Don’t worry about him. The position at this moment is simple. If the four of us, you and your wife, Mrs Wilson and myself, don’t get off this island tonight, we’ll have a hue and cry raised against us.”

Aurelia held his arm desperately. “Edouard, I can’t leave him – he’s my husband!”

“If you
don’t
leave ’im,” Mary said harshly, “’e’ll kill yer with all that whippin’ and punchin’, quite apart from ’im raisin’ a hue and cry. Once he’s done that he’s got all yer money, this plantation – and Mr Yorke’s Kingsnorth. Not bad, for the price of a jab from a kitchen knife. Damnation, Alfred, I wish I’d remembered about the ’eart.”

“Is Mrs Bullock correct, Edouard?” Aurelia asked. “About the hue and cry?”

Ned nodded. “The way things are in this island at the moment, I think he could and will rouse out the Provost Marshal, for the reasons Mary has just said. He could have us all swinging from gibbets by the day after tomorrow.”

“But –”

“You are not staying,” Ned said firmly, “even if I have to kidnap you.”

“You won’t have to kidnap me, sir,” Mary said cheerfully, “and I’d be obliged if Alfred could come.”

“But what do we do
now
?” Aurelia asked tearfully.

Ned asked Bullock: “Do you have friends among the other servants – one or two men you can really trust?”

“Yes, sir. Several. Most of them hate Mr Wilson almost as much as we do.”

“Very well. In a few moments I shall go in and remove that knife and bandage the wound and put him to bed. I shall then tie him to the bedposts. He’ll come to no harm.”

He looked at Aurelia, expecting protests, but she was leaning on Mary for support and seemed relieved to find the woman was so calm.

“I want one of your friends to look in on him every hour or so, and give him a drink of water and some food – but not to untie him. The man should wear very old clothes, a mask, and put his hair in a cloth bag, so Mr Wilson will never recognize him.

“Then tomorrow morning at sunrise I want someone to hear Mr Wilson’s shouts – he’ll be in full cry, you can be sure of that. The alarm can be then raised with the Provost Marshal, but not before sunrise. Can you arrange all that while I’m seeing to the wound?”

Bullock nodded. “I’ve just the man in mind, sir. And no one will hear Mr Wilson’s shouts before sunrise tomorrow. Here, though –” the man grabbed Ned’s arm. “Suppose visitors come?”

Ned cursed himself for not thinking of that.

“Tell them Mr Wilson is down in Bridgetown. That he left an hour earlier.”

It took an hour to remove the knife, bandage the wound, and get Wilson in bed. With him at last lying in the four-poster, groaning and calling for rumbullion, Bullock arrived with the second knife and held it to a startled Wilson’s throat while Ned cut into four lengths the rope that Bullock had brought in from the stables. He tied up Wilson by securing one limb to each of the four posts.

“A solid bed,” he commented to Wilson. “But don’t struggle too much because you might make the wound bleed. I am not going to gag you, but if you shout your throat will be cut. I have arranged that. And to prove the point, a man will visit you every hour. If you are being quiet he will give you food and drink. If you are being a naughty boy, he will cut your throat. And if you
have
been good, he will raise the alarm on your behalf at sunrise.”

“But listen, Yorke,” Wilson snarled, “you will be caught: the Provost Marshal will raise a hue and cry. You, Aurelia and those two scoundrels of servants…why, think of the scandal!”

“The only scandal will be what you create yourself,” Ned said quietly. “Now, are you comfortable?”

Wilson refused to answer and Ned shrugged his shoulders. “Then it remains only to bid you farewell. And as the days and weeks and months, and perhaps years go by, just remember, Wilson: all your eggs are in one basket. The moment Cromwell goes, you are finished. And any day I might return secretly to the island and pay you a visit…”

Saxby was standing at the bottom of the double stone staircases which led up to the front door of the house like a scorpion’s claw when the two horses came to a stop, lathered and blowing hard after a long gallop. As soon as he recognized Aurelia he ran to help her slide from the horse while Ned jumped down and lifted Bullock’s wife to the ground. Bullock was no horseman. Ned had the feeling that his wife Mary sitting behind him, arms round his waist, had kept them from falling off by sheer strength of character.

Aurelia was quietly sobbing and Yorke gestured to one of the servants to lead her into the house. As soon as Saxby had given the reins of the horse to a groom who had come running from the stables, Yorke asked: “How goes the loading of the
Griffin
?”

“All the provisions and water are on board, sir; we’re just getting the powder and musket and pistol shot loaded now. That leaves only the sugar – we’ll be carrying that until long after dark.”

Yorke nodded. “We have to sail earlier than I intended. We need to be clear of here an hour after sunrise.”

“You ran into trouble,” Saxby said in a comment rather than a question.

Yorke quickly outlined what had happened, making sure that it was far from clear to Saxby who actually stuck the knife in Wilson’s back.

“Pity it didn’t kill him,” Saxby commented, adding seriously as an afterthought: “If we’re quitting the island, we could go back and finish him off. It’d be doing a lot of people a good turn, sir.”

“Yes, but we’d be known through the Caribbee islands as murderers.”

Saxby shrugged his shoulders. “Traitors…Royalists…bolted apprentices… We have six murderers among our indentured servants and twice as many burglars, pickpockets and sheep stealers.”

“You’re their foreman,” Yorke said ironically. “Still, we’ll leave Mr Wilson in peace now. If he was dead he could not worry…”

“Aye, there’s that to it,” Saxby said, understanding at once. “As it is, he’s never going to be sure now that one of us won’t creep up on a dark night and stick a bigger knife on the correct side.”

“Anyway, go down to the jetty and make the lads hurry: you can tell them there’s an emergency. Don’t say any more, though.”

With that he walked up the stone staircase into the house, calling for Aurelia. She was in his bedroom being helped by Mary, who was holding up the sheet of polished brass he used as a mirror so that Aurelia could see to tidy her hair. Mary tactfully excused herself, put down the mirror and left the room.

Almost at once, Aurelia buried her head in his arms, weeping uncontrollably. Like most men, Ned had no idea what to do. All he could think of was that he had a great deal of work to finish before sailing at sunrise.

For a minute or two he felt like a kidnapper and was prepared to leave any arguing until later, but at the same time he was embarrassed that Aurelia should be trying to make do with his spartan quarters. His bed was unmade – not that it entailed more than straightening the linen sheet on the leather straps criss-crossing the low wooden frame – but the dressing table had only a comb in addition to the mirror, and on the floor beside it was a pewter basin with his shaving brush, razor and a jug of soapberry juice.

“You do not use a hammaco,” Aurelia sobbed inconsequentially.

“No, they’re too uncomfortable. You can’t turn over.”

“That is a bed for a married couple,” she murmured.

“Yes,” Ned said, and she blushed.

Suddenly she stood up, obviously having reached a decision about something.

“Edouard – I must go home: this is madness!”

Ned was startled and felt fear, not knowing how to deal with a woman whose sense of duty was overcoming all logic or reason. Suddenly, and for the first time since he had known her, he lost his temper.

“You can’t go back,” he said harshly. “He’ll kill you. If he didn’t strangle you and say it was done by the same person that stabbed him, he would thrash you every day for the rest of his life. Or your life.”

He gripped her shoulders, shaking her in an attempt to make the words sink in, and lapsing into French. “He has everything. He has all your money and the plantation is in his name; he’ll have Kingsnorth within a month. What does he want you for? He hates you. To begin with, you were simply a source of money: that was why he married you. Now you get in his way.”

He continued shaking her as words poured from his mouth. “He never loved you:
that
is what you cannot accept. You think – you have to think, because of your pride – that he married you because you are beautiful and he loved you.

“He married you because when your father fled from France after the Edict of Nantes, he brought a lot of money with him. Your family are wealthy. When he died you inherited a fortune, and Wilson knew it.

“He married you and has used all your money. What have you today? Not a penny piece. Not a ha’porth of love from that man; in fact you have his hatred – because you are still alive and prevent him replacing you with other women at the estate house. But you know better than anyone else what he has done – he keeps women elsewhere.

“But what has
he
got? A great plantation bought with your money and which he would have lost at least a couple of times if the remainder of your money had not saved him from bankruptcy. And soon he’ll have this place. Then he’ll be by far the biggest landowner on this island, and be a powerful man in the Assembly.