Ram; being the tale of one Ramillies Anstruther, 1704-55 .. (49 page)

The old chief smiled and signed for his guests to sit beside him. Mary explained that Ram was a warrior brother of the Beloved Man —as they called Oglethorpe—and had won battles in many lands.

"The Man of War is welcome," the mico answered. "Waniors of all nations are loved for their valor. My young men will learn from him." He called and Toonahowi, a boy who was his adopted heir, brought him a lighted pipe, from which he drew a few puffs. He handed it to Oglethorpe, who puffed in turn and passed it on to Ram.

Though almost gagged by the raw weed, the latter smoked stolidly, realizing that this was a ceremony of significance. These people were far more primitive than any he'd met in India, yet their courtesy was impressive. He decided to learn their tongue and try to win their friendship.

Afterward, Oglethorpe said he wanted Ram to explore the surrounding country. "Spanish Indians sometimes raid this far," he explained. "The Yamacraws will fight beside us in danger, but first we must know the land. Also the French may send their Indians against us from the west. So go when your people are sheltered and your horses fit—and also seek likely land for your own grant."

Ram was delighted, but first he had much to do. Most urgent was to cope with Lucinda's terror of the wilderness. A way appeared when Burrows said he was taking the Endurance back to Charles Town for a cargo of rice and lumber, which he'd trade in the Bahamas for rum, sugar and molasses to sell at Liverpool. Since Ram also needed rice until a crop came in, Lucinda could buy it in Charles Town and also hire three white sawyers. He gave her £200 gold and said she need not return until the house was finished.

So it was a gay young wife who waved him adieu from the pink's

stern, feeling very brave, because Mrs. Noble Jones and the other women had praised her for making a new voyage before she had even recovered from the first.

On the same day that Lucinda was dropping downriver aboard the Endurance, to return to Charles Town, a thickset man with a rolling gait was rapping on a door in a quiet Havana street. He chewed the quid in his mouth, spat juice into the dust and vowed he would make the new-arrived official from Madrid pay him his due.

He rapped again. Damnation, these poxed Dons was all the same! Mananal Ne\'er in a hurry to serve a decent man. Can't even answer a knock.

A grille opened and framed a broad Negro face. "Sefior?"

"His Excellence expects me," the visitor growled in poor Spanish.

The black admitted him and led him across a flower-scented patio and into a sunlit room, where he left him.

Soon a man of military bearing entered. His face was impassive, but under white brows his eyes were alert and cold. "Senor Bacon?" he queried, crossing to an escritoire.

"That's me, Excellence," the other agreed. "They say ye talk English, so with permission I'll use it. I can think better then."

"Very well," the other nodded distastefully. "I've just arrived, you understand, else I would have sent for you earlier." Taking a memorandum from the desk, he glanced at it. "You left London in July. You have information you claim to be vitally important to the authorities here. In return, you wish to be employed and paid well, and you're willing to undertake secret missions to the English colonies. Is that correct?"

"Aye, Excellence. But I've bin like to starve, waiting for someone to use me. Now I'm told it's Your Excellence I must serve."

"What are the details of this new colony?"

Thomas Bacon shifted uneasily. "There weren't much settled afore I sailed, sir, but I got a list of them what's named trustees for this Georgia Colony. 'Tis to be a military outpost for Carolina."

"That we already know. The list."

Bacon proffered a crumpled paper. "Mostly trustees' names. Excellence. Weren't none of the settlers taken on official when I left. But a military officer was. A lackey of Mr. Oglethorpe told me hisself over

a few glasses. Said his master had looked over half London for the captain. Found him just afore I sailed—name of Anstruther."

Brian stiffened, remembering a hate-filled face outside the opera house, a challenge he couldn't accept; also one he had accepted—at Belgrade. Of course! Oglethorpe had been there, too, as an aide to Prince Eugene. Because of his family, he'd always assumed him to be unswervingly loyal to King James. Why was he now connected with a project so inimical to Spain?

"You know the Carolina coast well?" he asked the renegade.

"Aye, Excellence. I've sailed up and down it from St. Augustine many a time. I know every isle, sound and river mouth. And I've trusty friends in every port. I can be useful, sir."

"Do you know a John Savage in Charles Town?"

"Can't say I do, but I ain't bin there of late. But I do know Cap'n Davis there. He's bin trading along the coast for years. He ain't above giving news, if he's paid for it."

"Good. I will use you. Meanwhile"—Brian took a purse from a drawer—"this should satisfy you for now. I understand you've not mixed with the English factors or sailors here since your arrival. Change your name and appearance and now go among them, but be cautious. Report to me each week." He rose, and Bacon, his thick lips smirking, pocketed the purse and left.

Brian paced the room, thinking of the rogue as a mere cog in the great plan for destroying Britain in America. Another was John Savage, bom Michael Wall. There would be many others.

He smiled thinly. Oglethorpe's mother had been a Wall and Irish born, so Michael must be her kin, however distant. Perhaps he should be sent back to Europe to ingratiate himself with her son. . . . No, better leave him in South Carolina. There were many allies in England of equal social rank to Oglethorpe and the other trustees.

He examined Bacon's list: several peers, some members of Parliament; a few heretic clerg}'men; and the rest all men of importance.

He touched a bell. The Negro appeared. "Estevan, inform Senora Royston I request the honor of her presence."

The servant gone, he clenched his hands. Senora Roystonl But the lie was necessary to explain the child. Bad enough to have given herself to any man, but to a Sasanach! So now she had to pass as the widow of the English naval officer, John Royston, a secret Catholic

and an ardent Jacobite, who'd been lost at sea without ever having seen the son he'd sired.

Here in the New World the tale would be believed. But in Old Spain and among Irish expatriates, his own known loathing of anything Saxon precluded belief that he would ever have permitted Erinne to wed an Englishman, however Catholic and Jacobite.

Protection of her good name was part reason for his taking this post. The other part was that, certain there could be no new Jacobite rising until Prince Charles was older or England could be goaded into war in Europe, he could help destroy British settlements in America and the West Indies. Perhaps this projected Georgia settlement could provide the spark, for it was a direct challenge to Spain. And he, responsible for the Havana section of the vast network of spies which Madrid had spread through all British territory, prayed he could fan that spark into a conflagration.

He turned as Erinne entered. His face softened. It was still incredible that so lovely a creature had permitted herself to be soiled by a Saxon. Yet the child in her arms was damning proof.

"You sent for me, Father?"

"At your leisure, will you copy this list?" He gave it to her. "Compare the names with the information we brought about prominent Englishmen, and make notes about all you can identify. I already know something about two: James Oglethorpe and Captain Ramil-lies Anstruther."

The baby crowed and she looked down at it adoringly. "Oh, Father, I was foolish to fear this climate might harm him. See how he thrives! I know you will rarely even look at him, but please! He grows mightily every day!"

Moved by her plea he bent, and the child smiled up at him, a tiny thumb in his rosebud mouth.

Hazel eyes! Blessed Jesus, where had he seen their like before?

Ram drove his people hard; a frame house was half up and the garden lot planted. Each day he visited the Yamacraw village, taking gifts to the old mico and others. Already he had picked up some Creek words, especially from Toonahowi, who had acquired a little English from the Musgroves and was eager to learn more.

He also visited the soldiers. The regulars were commanded by En-

sign Philip Delegal, whose heutenant back at Beaufort was his own father, Phihp, senior. Belonging to no regiment, independent companies were raised for permanent service in the colonies and were trained both as artillery and foot. But their men, aware they had small chance ever to return home, were lax and indifferent.

The rangers were of another stripe, being Carolinians by birth or adoption. And their captain, James McPherson—said to have fled Scotland after the '15 rising—had picked them well. Short-term volunteers, all were expert in the woods or at handling the frail Indian canoes; could fight afoot, mounted or afloat. Damme, they were even better than dragoons!

But as McPherson was too shorthanded to lend him any of them, Ram chose instead young Toonahowi and two other Yamacraws, Hillispilli and Stimoche, alias "Goggle-eyes," whom he mounted on his own horses. He himself rode Alan and took two mares as pack animals.

They followed up the Savannah, finding the going hard since they had to cross several tributaries, between which were wide marshes and, inland, impenetrable thickets. Too, the low ground swarmed with mosquitoes, reminding Ram that wherever he had found them in India, there had also been fevers. Certainly this was not the site for his grant. But each day he mapped the area covered, meanwhile learning more of the Creeks' language and ways. Their woodcraft and skill in tracking game fascinated him and he tried to be their apt pupil.

They swung southward toward the Ogeechee, a river not so great as the Savannah. The country became more open for some way, with several broad savannahs, and when the forest closed in again they traveled a well-marked trail that brought them to a ford on the river. Beside it stood the ruins of an old English fort, which Ram thought badly sited. They crossed and rode down the right bank for miles, through good open pasture land. Just where a tributary forked into the Ogeechee, Ram saw a far better site and made a careful plan of it.

Further downriver, he picked his grant. Just where the forest gave onto open land sloping toward the sea, the river turned sharply north, then bent back upon itself so that the ground it enclosed formed a long, high peninsula whose neck was not two furlongs wide.

It would make perfect commonage for anyone having a plantation across its head. Also it was free of mosquitoes, averaging about twelve feet above the water, which was sweet upstream though brackish just below, being tidewater. Next day he made a complete map, rode to find where the river emptied into Ossabaw Sound, then headed back to Savannah.

"Never knew you were an engineer," Oglethorpe beamed. "Now, as to that ford. You think a new fort would be better downstream? Hm, perhaps I'd better send McPherson too." He smiled apologetically. "Have to handle these colony men gently. They're all cursedly touchy if we don't forever run to them for advice."

Ram laughed. "I'm only going on what the Yamacraws say and what I'd do myself. Besides, there's good growing land there for the garrison's food."

"Excellent! I've a mind to name it Argyle, after my kinsman the Duke, who's so greatly aided us at Court. But your own grant? I'd have thought you'd take it along our own river."

"Too many swamps and likely too many agues. I had my fill of both in Hindustan. Where I've chosen—by your leave—it's high and defensive too."

"Then have our surveyor run it for you. But, lookee, I don't want to lose you here yet. I need your help with the town militia."

Noble Jones was overburdened with town surveys, but he promised to run the grant soon and, further, generously drew plans for a large house that would be both a fine home and a stronghold.

Ram returned south, taking Rob, Dave Lann and others. Wells had to be sunk and cellars dug. For foundations he followed Colonel Bull's advice and used blocks of tabby; a concrete mixture of sand, lime and burned oyster shells—the last mined from huge mounds left at the river's mouth by long-dead Indians. Seth Whiston, the mason-bricklayer, found good clay nearby and soon a kiln was fired. Once the main house was up, Rob's, Joseph's and Peg-Leg's would be built, the whole forming a miniature interlocking fortress.

Peg-Leg, meanwhile, had become a shipowner. Since seeing shallow-draft piraguas he had wanted one, and now had bargained with a Charles Town man for a thirty-tonner, with a single lugsail and able to be rowed by only two oars. "Didn't I tell ye, Captain, you'd never regret having me along?"

he gloated, "Why, I can bring all our stock and stores from Savannah in a few trips and save ye cutting a road through the woods." He was as good as his word, and later Oglethorpe hired him to transport materials up to Fort Argyle, which McPherson was building just where Ram had suggested, some twelve miles upriver from the bend.

When Ram got back to Savannah, he was pleasantly surprised to find Lucinda there. And though full of Carolina doings, she now seemed reconciled to Georgia. "I'll make a worthy home for you here, my love," she vowed. "Mr. Causton says his lady and other gentlemen's ladies arrive soon. La, we'll excel Charles Town itself!"

Her new spirit delighted him. The blow, therefore, was the harder when he found she had drawn on him for £500 Carolina currency, in addition to the 200 guineas he had given her,

"How could I avoid gaming?" she sobbed contritely. "Surely you'd not have the Carolina gentlefolk think we're penniless Trust immigrants." Oh, she'd make it up to him. She'd be responsible for the silk they must produce; she'd tend the mulberry trees, feed the worms, unwind the cocoons, learn to spin the threads.

He forgave her, as he'd have forgiven a wayward child. But when he returned to the grant, she begged to remain behind until at least the building was done. So he went back to driving his people to get the houses roofed and habitable.