Ram; being the tale of one Ramillies Anstruther, 1704-55 .. (62 page)

He obeyed automatically. Oh, God, why must a man think?

At last the liquor gripped him, so that he began to shout strange oaths; to re-live tortured fragments from the past. Women's faces floated before his eyes and he called to them. Chanda! Sue! Carla! Annie! . . . And Lucinda!

Once Peg-Leg had to force him back onto the sea cot, when he tried to thrust his sword through Erinne, who was clawing out his eyes with knife-spiked hands. But it wasn't Erinne, it was the Golden Ganesha.

He puked all over the blankets and later didn't know that Peg-Leg had washed away the filth and wrapped fresh warmed blankets around him.

CHAPTER 20 BLOODY MARSH, 1742

Davie saw the Lass first and tolled the bell, which brought Joseph up to take the glass.

"She's flying the Distress! Boy, get the men to the jetty." While the child clattered down to obey, Bland continued to peer worriedly. The schooner rounded a bend so that he could see down into the length of her waist. There, side by side, were four canvas-covered forms—bodies! Was the colonel one of them? He shivered.

He stood with his wife and the men on the jetty as the vessel berthed. Peg-Leg had the wheel; there was no sign of Ram,

"Oh, Joseph!" Maria moaned.

Peg-Leg stumped down the gangplank, carrying Ram's money casket. His eyes met Bland's. "Madam, Mr. Rob and Diccon—aye, and Matt. Couldn't find Jack's body, Daufuskie Sound, it was. Squalls. The piragua's piled up on the island. Port side's stove in,"

"The master?"

"Below. He's—strange. Never knowed him so bad. Best have Mrs. B. go to him."

Nodding tearfully, Maria went aboard.

"Like crazed," Peg-Leg whispered, taking Joseph aside. "Must ha' loved her sorely—and the boy." He told of finding the wreck; of keeping Ram drunk ever since, fearing for his sanity.

Ram appeared, leaning on Maria's arm. He halted upon seeing the shrouded dead, a wild glare in his red-rimmed eyes; then, jaw clenched, he came ashore. A murmur of sympathy arose from his people, and Joseph went toward him.

"Away!" He brushed past, weaving unsteadily because the brandy had left his head for his legs. Yes, now he could think—and remember. Cuckold! Fresh stabs of humiliation tore him.

As he neared the house, Davie ran to him. "Your honor!"

Sight of him sent his brain whirling anew. Bastard— Rob's bastard! Aye, and as like Rob as a portrait miniature. So was Diccon! Why not? "Begone!" he muttered, fists deep in his pockets lest he harm the child. Within, he flung himself into his study chair. Here at least he'd escape leering eyes.

Mercifully, Maria in her innocence had \\at enough to think he'd not want to sleep in the chamber he'd shared with his dead wife, so prepared the blue room. And Joseph, realizing his agony but not knowing its bitter cause, placed a bottle of Nantes in it. Had he reached the room unhindered, drink might have deadened him into sleep, but Margot stood at the stairhead, her beady eyes glittering.

"O mon colonel, le Bon Dieu 'as preserved you and punished the wicked!" she greeted. "Ah, but had I dared, I could have revealed all long ago. But she was a devil, and I feared her. How my heart goes out to you! Ah, give me leave to comfort you and make you forget!"

He stared at her incredulously. The dirty drab! Tr\ing to share his bed before her mistress was even buried!

"I am a lady bom, monsieur, of better birth than she, yet I would feel honored to serve you alwavs in any way you may wish."

"You louse-ridden scum!" His hand smashed across her avaricious, scheming face. She screeched and fell. He lurched back to the study. With shaking hand he drew a bill for loo guineas. \Vhen he went up again, she had risen and was touching her split lips with blood-smeared fingers.

"Here!" He would have pushed past, but her cupidity was still unsated.

"Madame's clothes, they are now mine! It is part of my contract . . . !" She ended in a wail as he thrust her aside.

"Take 'em all!" Rushing into the blue room, he threw himself on the bed, there to writhe in agony until, seeing the brandy, he drank himself once more into blessed oblivion.

So he didn't know that Joseph took her in a wagon to Savannah, together with boxes of Lucinda's clothes and the loo-guinea bill hidden securely between her breasts. She was going on to Charles Town where, she boasted, she'd make her fortune as a hairdresser.

Joseph brought back the Reverend Norris to perform the funeral services, and tlie dead were interred in Shoreacres' own httle cemetery. But Ram remained in his bedchamber, sick in soul and convinced that his people's sympathy merely hid their secret laughter and contempt.

Only when Mazzique and Shannon were at last recaptured was he roused. They'd been found skulking near Mount Pleasant, almost opposite Palachicolas Fort on the Savannah, having hoped to cross the river and lose themselves in the Carolinas.

When he reached town they'd been tried, had admitted their guilt and awaited execution. He interviewed Mazzique, who confessed complicity but no actual part in the Fort Argyle murders and seemed horrified by them. For a year before his first capture, he insisted, he'd received no further instructions from the Baron del Lago. What few he had gotten had come from a Don Jaime who was, he understood, formerly the baron's assistant. He pleaded for Ram's forgiveness and seemed to be reconciled to his fate.

Ram saw the executions. Shannon died a Catholic and blessing James Stuart to the last. Mazzique, curiously, was attended on the scaffold by a Protestant minister, having sworn he had fled from Spain originally because he had turned heretic. He was buried at Savannah. Shannon's body, howe\'er, was taken to the mouth of the Ogeechee and there hanged in chains.

Ram went to Frederica where Oglethorpe, sallow and weak, was slowly recuperating from his own sickness and humiliation. But his greeting was warm and profoundly sympathetic.

Ram said that he'd done with Georgia. "I've told you about my enemy. Now I've no family, I'll seek him out, wherever he is."

"You'd not leave now? Here I am, failed at Augustine and half Carolina crying I've betrayed 'em—aye, some madmen have even writ to England saying I plot with the Spaniards to massacre all the English! God, how far will they go to ruin me? Even Cooke mutters against me, because I won't let him play huckster and make profit from the troops as Cochrane did. And now youd leave me!"

"I must, James. I never told ye, but . . ." Then Ram was explaining about del Lago's daughter, who had borne his child. "The debt between us cries for settlement. I'll hunt him down and we'll end things face to face." As if this confession had burst a dam, he went on, baldly, savagely, to tell of his own betrayal by Rob. "He put a

bastard on me, and left another. Well, I've spawned one of my own and, begod, I'll have it, if I have to tear it from its mother's arms before the Irishman's dying eyes! If by-blows are so plentiful, why shouldn't I have my share? At least I'll know it's mine."

Oglethorpe rose, eyes hard. "Colonel Anstmther, we're at war and you're my subordinate. I forbid so crazed a plan. If you must risk your life, you'll do it in the King's service."

"I'll do as I will, damn ye, and you won't stop me!" Ram flared. Instantly each man's hand went to his sword. It was Ram's which dropped first. "James, I spoke wildly. But don't ye see if I settle this baron I'll help our cause. He's the web's center, snaring fools like Wall and Mazzique into betraying us. He's an arch plotter and likely was as far back as Belgrade, when he murdered my father."

Oglethorpe took him by the shoulders. "Old friend, we've both been sick with grief. Let's be soldiers again. There's little I can do till I know what Admiral Vernon intends. He's already blown up Porto Bello's defenses in Panama and he's damaged the great fortress at Cartagena. He's now at Jamaica, awaiting an army from home. If he takes the Havana, mayhap I can again attack Augustine and make all Florida ours.

"If you crave present action, I'll issue letters of marque for that fine schooner. Combine duty with profit and away to learn if Cuba's prepared against the admiral. And once the Dons are beat, Ram, I'll help ye root out your enemy, though he were hiding in the dungeons of the Madrid Inquisition itself. Till then you're my spy officer." "I'll do it!" For the first time in weeks a wan smile lighted Ram's gaunt face. How Peg-Leg would pirouette on his wooden stump now he was to be a privateersman!

Ten days out from Tybee Roads, the Lass, twelve guns, thirty crew, made her first capture. It was only an unarmed pink, blown off its course from Cuba to St. Augustine with sugar, molasses and flour, but its sale would bring a profit. Since it had come from the Bay of Nipe in eastern Cuba, Ram believed its captain when he swore that he knew nothing of militar}' preparations at the Havana.

Putting a prize crew aboard, therefore, the Lass made for Nassau, on New Providence Island, where she watered. No one there knew anything about Admiral Vernon or what the Spaniards might be

doing; so south toward Cuba itself, though keeping well offshore to avoid the more heavily armed guar da costa ships on patrol.

But days of such idle cruising set Ram's raw nerves screaming. Action! he prayed—action in which he could forget the past. In his urgency, he considered going ashore in disguise and reaching the Havana, there to learn the situation for himself. He wanted especially to know how his agents fared, though he suspected that most of them were already imprisoned. i\lso he might learn if del Lago was still there or, if not, where he'd gone.

Then fantastically good luck. The schooner captured another small prize, a sloop, manned by four seamen from a guarda costa and its original three Carib Indian crewmen, and chained in its hold was Saul Tomson, one of Ram's agents. A factor of the English South Sea Company, he'd been under surveillance since the war's outbreak; but when he found his compatriots gradually being rounded up as spies, he'd tried to escape to Jamaica in this sloop, only to be taken by the guarda costa. He was being returned to Cuba for trial and inevitable execution when the Lass had taken the sloop.

Yes, he said, flat-bottomed boats were being built, and several regiments had arrived from Old Spain, bringing many cannon and munitions. If Vernon attacked Cuba he'd get a hot reception; if he didn't, the Spaniards intended invading Georgia.

Baron del Lago, the old Irishman with the fine daughter and her son? They'd returned to Spain long since, he was sure. "Thank God ye saved me, Colonel, else the Inquisition would have had me!"

That his enemy had left the New World fed Ram's frustration anew; but the other information was so vital he knew James must hear of it swiftly. If Vernon failed, all the southern colonies would feel the Spaniards' might.

He landed at Frederica to report to Oglethorpe, and the Lass sailed again without him, for the general had a new mission ashore for him. British prestige had fallen low among the Creeks since the Augustine siege and, James pointed out, "You've been fortunate in dealing with these simple people. Old Tomochichi loved you and Toonahowi calls you brother. So go, regain their loyalty. Above all, keep the French from turning them against us."

It was just the task Ram needed, since it provided an opiate of

sheer physical drudgery. During the ensuing months he roved deep into Indian country; he smoked peace pipes in Uchee and Cherokee towns, even in those of the Choctaws, where more than once his mere presence thwarted French traders from leading them against the British.

Then urgent word from Oglethorpe: The army sent out to Vernon had met disaster. Instead of attacking Cuba, the admiral had again sailed for Cartagena, believing the troops would easily take the fortress, which barred the way across Panama to the rich Spanish cities on the Pacific. But blunders had cost thousands of lives, so that now an attack against the Havana was impossible. Freed from danger, the Spaniards were pouring reinforcements into Augustine, whence already they were making forays into Georgia. Could Ram bring tribes who could retaliate?

No vermilion-and-black brave ever welcomed a war call so eagerly. At last the chance to strike, to lose oneself in deeds! Often with Creeks alone, sometimes with a few of his rangers added, Ram hovered around Augustine, laying ambushes, cutting off small enemy parties, driving off the scrawny cattle. He even resented having occasionally to report to Oglethorpe at Frederica.

"As commander I welcome your daring, as a friend I deplore it," the general told him, after he'd returned from one especially desperate action. "You're no ensign, seeking to gain my notice, but my most trusted officer, who must take command should aught happen to me. Now you must become the colonel again and help me plan our defenses. Vernon's left us only two warships, though transports and store ships reach Augustine daily. Invasion's sure, yet Carolina refuses to send me a single man. Help me to save it and ourselves."

Ram obeyed, though unwillingly. Luckily, Peg-Leg and other pri-vateersmen were damaging the Dons at sea; though they in turn had their own sea wolves, taking and sinking even up to Virginia.

The regiment was now strengthened by a Grenadier Company, raised in England by Captain Horton, and Planter Mark Carr had formed a company of boatmen, or marines, in Virginia and the northern colonies to man the small craft Oglethorpe was accumulating to protect the inland way.

Late in June, George Dunbar, aboard a schooner oflF the west shire of Cumberland Island, reported that fourteen enemy half-gal-

leys had tried to land troops there but had been beaten off by Fort William and the schooner itself.

"If William falls, the inland way's open through Cumberland Sound," Oglethorpe groaned, and sent off the Grenadier Company by water to reinforce it. Soon he himself followed with more regulars in his scout boat and a smaller consort, while Ensign Tolson, in a larger boat, brought up the rear.

And Ram? He was raging with impatience because he could not follow in turn. But only the night before the Lass had limped in for repairs, having lost several men killed and wounded in a heavy engagement wherein she'd been hit hard by shot in her hull and rigging. Even though men had swarmed over her, patching and strengthening, she'd been unable to sail with the rest. But at last Peg-Leg reported all was ready. Ram took some of his rangers and a dozen Creeks aboard with him, and she set sail.