The Rebel Pirate (28 page)

Trent was skilled indeed, as well as talented. He moved with absolute economy, indulged in no showy flourishes, followed no pattern. Instead, he attacked cleanly again and again, the tip of his blade drawn like a magnet to the most vulnerable point of his opponent’s body, flickering, feinting, and thrusting, but always seeking avenues past his foe’s guard and outside his expectations.

Anthony Trent fought opportunistically, like her brother, because he meant to kill.

Sparhawk did not. He meant to win, yes. To injure or maim perhaps, but only incident to his goal, which was an abstract notion of justice. He meant to spit his father’s black heart, and his goal was a fixed point in Trent’s chest.

He darted forward and danced aside at the same time, putting the point of his blade through Trent’s sleeve, and snarling it.

Sparhawk was going to die. His sword was caught; the way was open for Trent to slash him across the body, a killing blow.

Sarah cried out.

Trent hesitated.

There was a knock upon the door. Mrs. Brown’s voice came through the thin wood, clear as a bell. “I know you said to admit no one, my lord, but there is a reverend here who insists on coming in.”

Trent’s brow furrowed. “But I did not send for him.”

He had always planned to kill Sparhawk, Sarah realized. She was, in fact, a terrible judge of men.

“No,” said Sparhawk, “but I did.”

The door swung open. The cleric who filled it was a New England divine of the old school, dressed even more soberly than Sparhawk, his neck cloth starched like a drainpipe. His presence made you feel like a sinner in the hands of an angry God.

He was no longer young, and his tall, angular frame moved stiffly. He took two steps into the room, narrowed his eyes upon Sparhawk, and spoke in a voice ravaged by too many years at the pulpit. “Almighty God is merciful. Tristan, you live.”

•   •   •

Sparhawk heard his father’s sword clatter to the floor. He looked away from the cleric to see Anthony Trent stumble back against the wall, shaking his head. “It cannot be,” he said. “I saw your grave.”

Sarah stepped to the center of the room. Sparhawk had forgotten for a moment that she was there. She addressed the parson. “You will swear it? That Sparhawk is Trent’s son?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the parson. “He is Tristan. I saw the boy every day of his life from the hour he was born. I knew him as well as his own mother.” He turned to Trent. “It is he, my lord, and no other.”

She turned to Trent. “You agreed to accept his judgment,” she said.

Trent nodded numbly. “I think I began to suspect the truth myself, a few moments ago.
Strutting and circling
. I should never have entrusted my son’s introduction to the blade to that dropsical Spaniard.”

“And will you confess,” asked Sparhawk, standing upon a precipice, “to bribing the magistrates, to ordering my death?”

“Is that what you thought? Why? In God’s name, why?”

“You threatened my mother with arrest for prostitution, and three days later she was taken to jail.”

Trent closed his eyes. “I see. Yes. You are right to blame me. I didn’t order it, would have given my life to stop it, but I
am
the cause of your mother’s death. And of everything that you suffered.”

Sarah shook her head. “No.”

“Poor Sarah,” said Trent, smiling faintly. “I was going to make up for everything—by saving you.”

Sparhawk swallowed. “If you didn’t order it, then who did?”

“My wife. My second wife. Or more accurately, her family. And I brought them to Nevis. On my own ship,” said Trent. “Like some biblical plague.”

Sparhawk felt the anger that had sustained him on the
Scylla
returning. “My mother died on a dirt floor in rags like an animal, and you have slept on silk sheets these past fifteen years.”

“Yes,” Trent said. “It was my fault. I was young and selfish and arrogant, and I thought your mother ought to bend to my whims. I loved her, passionately, as a friend and partner. I wanted to have her, and money besides, and I saw a way to get it. Flora Milton was passably attractive and came with a hundred thousand pounds. Enough to make Polkerris both solvent and profitable. I envisioned your mother kept snug in a nice cottage on Flora’s money. One woman a rich, unloved dupe, the other a cosseted pet. It might even have worked, had I chosen another heiress for my scheme, but the Miltons were more ambitious and ruthless than I understood.

“I thought that if I could speak with your mother in person, I could get her to fall in with my plans, so I stopped in Nevis on my way home with the Miltons aboard. They were a planter family, rich off sugar and slaves, and eager for the advantage that a titled connection at court would bring.

“You were in the cottage that night, when your mother and I argued. She threatened to write to the Miltons and tell them that I was already married. And fool that I was, I told the Miltons. I lied to them, of course, but I had half convinced myself it was the truth. I told them that your mother had been a youthful fancy of mine, that I had tricked her into thinking a form of marriage had taken place, and that she had no real legal standing. I even tried to pass myself off as an honorable gentleman who had done the right thing, and set her up with money for your keeping.

“I was twenty-eight and thought myself clever and worldly, but I was a fool. The Miltons did not believe my tale of a sham marriage, but they were the very picture of warmth and understanding. Flora’s brothers explained that it was a simple matter to make the problem of my first wife go away.”

Sparhawk dreaded what he would hear next.

“They told me not to worry, that all would be taken care of, and that I was to think nothing more about the matter. I protested, of course, but I realized, sitting there listening to these two men casually talk murder on the veranda, that I had to get your mother away.”

“No,” Sparhawk said. “I saw you throw my mother off your ship the next night.”

“Yes,” said Trent. “A few hours after Flora’s family had plotted your mother’s murder on the veranda. I had had no opportunity to warn her, dared not betray any sign to the Miltons that I would not fall in with their plans. She had come to the ship because the cottage had been broken into, and all of her papers stolen. The Miltons, I realized, but I could not tell her that then. So I returned to the cottage the next day. You were out studying with the Jewess.”

Trent closed his eyes and went on. “The Miltons had money and influence in the islands. I had none. Edwards”—he turned to the parson, who had been sitting quietly—“agreed to help her get away.”

The Reverend Edwards took up the tale in his reedy, high voice. “We feared that once Anthony broke things off with Flora, the Miltons might take revenge on you and your mother, so we determined to hide you on one of the neighboring islands. Your mother did not want to tell you, did not want to frighten you. It was going to take a few days to arrange, to be sure that your refuge would not be easily discovered.”

“And I,” said Trent, “fool that I was, thought that by sailing with the Miltons aboard, I had removed the immediate danger. But men like the Miltons do not do their own killing, and they had already hired the sailors and bribed the magistrates.”

Sarah, Sparhawk realized, was weeping silently. He had no more tears, only a sick grief clawing his chest.

“When I went to fetch your mother for the journey,” said Edwards, “I found the cottage broken open. Everything of value taken. I went to the magistrates, of course, but they had been bribed to jail her, and such was the Miltons’ sway on the islands, there was no one to gainsay them. Of you I could find no trace. I managed to bribe one of the guards to let me in to see her, but afterward . . .” He trailed off.

“They poured lye down her throat so she could not tell her story to anyone.”

“I thought she was safe,” said Trent. “That she would be waiting for me when I returned.”

“And yet you married Flora Milton,” said Sparhawk. He did not know how his father could have done it.

“When we reached London, I tried to break it off with Flora, but her brothers told me that you . . . had already been taken to the harbor and drowned, and that your mother had been indentured to one of their plantations. Her life, they explained, depended on my good behavior. The Milton brothers had the letters I had written your mother, suggesting that we put aside our marriage, no doubt taken when the men they hired broke into the cottage. They had our marriage license and lines. Flora made it plain—very plain—that if I did not marry her, she and her brothers would make those letters public, and your death and the degradation of your mother would be laid at my door. I felt I had no choice. I married Flora and maneuvered the Admiralty into sending me to Nevis at the first opportunity. But by that time, it was already too late. Your mother was dead.”

“How did you discover I was not dead as well?” Sparhawk asked.

“With you and your mother lost to me, there was nothing to stop me from taking revenge on the Miltons, but first I decided to deal with the men they had hired to carry out their designs. I found the merchants who had sworn out accusations against your mother, and the magistrates who had been bribed to sell her indenture, and I killed them.

“With like purpose, I searched for the sailors who I thought had drowned you, and found one of them: an old tar who had once served with me and who swore that he would never hurt a child. That he had pressed you aboard an Indiaman and that, God willing, you lived still. Then I set out to find you. I had been directed to cruise the Caribbean, so could hardly go direct to Bombay, but I returned home and wrote letters and begged favors and accepted the leakiest brig afloat with a dispensation to survey the China Sea.”

“We would have been recalled by the time you got to Bombay,” said Sparhawk.

“Yes. And once I got there, I was ordered to stay. When I finally returned to Plymouth, Slough had been put on half pay and was roaming the dockside taverns always in pursuit of the rough trade. I found him, and questioned him, and discovered you had been entered into the ship’s company as Jack Nevis.”

“Slough was murdered on one of those Portsmouth ambles,” said James.

“Yes,” said his father. “So I understand.”

James did not ask him to elaborate.

“And the crew was dispersed, a wise precaution with a mutinous ship. I checked the Admiralty records and found you had ended up under Mungo McKenzie. It was then I checked his roster and found you had died. I visited your grave. There were flowers on it. I did not know who could have placed them there—and I knew McKenzie had perished of a fever in Calcutta that winter—but I hoped it meant that you had been loved by someone in those two years, when everyone and everything had been taken from you.”

“James Sparhawk,” said the man who bore his name, “was like a son to McKenzie, and a brother to me. We mourned him. And he knew of our plan. He asked me to make his a famous name. I suppose I have honored his request, though not in the manner he expected.”

“Dear God,” said his father. Sparhawk had never seen the man look afraid. “Have you evidence against Graves, enough to save you?”

“No,” said Sparhawk. “I have a few incriminating papers taken off the
Diana
before she burned that implicate Thomas Graves in brokering a transaction with Micah Wild, but nothing to prove the admiral used the gold to buy her. The Rebels say they have the evidence to damn him, but they hold it hostage to a powder run.”

His father shot up out of his chair. “You must leave,
now
, quickly. Graves and his marines will already be surrounding the building.”

“So you meant to turn me over to them, whether I was guilty or not.”

“No,” said Sarah.

Trent turned to look at her. “I did it for Sarah. You in exchange for her safety, Tristan.”

It was strange to be called by his real name.

“We must go,” Sarah said. She placed her hand in Sparhawk’s.

It was going to be all right, he realized. If she was going to come with him, they would have the
Sally
and her family and the freedom of the sea.

The floor vibrated. Feet on the steps. The door rattling in the jamb. Too late, too late. He had left it too late.

“The window,” said Sarah.

“They will be in the alley,” said his father. “I left nothing to chance.”

Sparhawk opened the casement. His father was right. Below in the alley was a thick line of red, blocking his escape. Marines. A dozen at least.

Sarah drew a little pistol out of her pocket.

“Put that away,” Sparhawk said. There must not be any shooting, not with Sarah in the room. He turned to Trent. “You must let them take me.”

His father nodded.

“I will get the evidence from Angela Ferrers,” said Sarah. “Somehow.”

“I will come with you,” said Trent. “And once I know where they are holding you, I will see Tommy Gage.”

The door burst open. Sparhawk was not surprised to see Lieutenant Graves leading the marines. “Arrest that man and take him to the
Preston
.”

Sparhawk held out his empty hands, but they knocked him to the floor anyway.

Sarah screamed.

“Her as well,” said Graves.

“That was not part of our arrangement,” said Anthony Trent. “The girl was to be left out of the matter of the gold.”

“The girl is a pirate. We have a witness who will testify that she took a British officer captive and held him in her home in Salem.”

“Micah,” said Sarah, numbly.

Two marines took hold of her.

She wrenched free of them and reached for James.

As his mother had in the cottage.

He acted without thought, punching one marine in the throat, feeling the man’s windpipe buckle beneath his knuckles, then sheathing his belt knife in another’s belly and feeling the blood wash warm and sticky over his hand—anything to win her free of this, but they were too many. The marines closed in around him, overwhelming him with the press of their bodies and the butts of their muskets.

A blow to his jaw knocked him to the floor, and a kidney punch kept him down. Between their booted feet he could see Sarah being dragged out the door, hear her slippers scrabbling for purchase over the floorboards, her cries echoing off the plaster walls.