Revenge of the Barbary Ghost (4 page)

Pamela sighed. “Have you ever thought, Anne, that Marcus, as an officer in the King’s army, cannot say all that he knows?” she asked, with a direct look. “Perhaps there is some raid planned on the smugglers. I don’t pry into such things and keep my own counsel. There are surely things he cannot divulge, and he would not be impolite, not to someone for whom he cares as much as you.”

Stricken, Anne mumbled, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“And really,
no
one here speaks openly of smuggling,” Pamela whispered, looking up and down the narrow street. It was relatively deserted, but there were still some ladies enjoying the morning air. “It’s considered poor form.”

Another officer had joined St. James and his friend, Captain Carleton, and all strode back across the street to join Pamela and Anne. The usual flirtatious nonsense went on, much directed toward Pam, as the most familiar to them of the two ladies, but Anne had her fair share of banter, too. It was decided that the gentlemen would walk the ladies back to Cliff House and take tea with them.

Anne, with an officer on either side of her, strolled along the dusty road away from the village. The road followed the coast, and the sea, a smooth glassy surface in the distance, glinted beyond the farmer’s fields and grassy countryside from the sun overhead. It was warmer than usual for May, but that was often the way in Cornwall, Anne had been told. She freed her arms and fanned herself, letting the gentlemen’s banter roll over her until she heard a key word. “I beg your pardon, Lieutenant Briggs?” she said, turning to the older of the two men. “Did you just say something about smugglers?”

“Aye, ma’am,” he said, his cheery round face wreathed in a sly smile. “Now, trust that! I’ve been tryin’ all kinds of flattery with you, and nothing worked until a discussion of the fuss last night.”

“What fuss was that?” she asked, casting a look ahead to Pamela and St. James, who had been joined by another friend, a major. Pam walked between the two red-coated men, a slim, blue-gowned accent to the crimson wool. Anne deliberately slowed her pace and fanned herself with her free hand. “Has something happened?” she asked, keeping her tone languid, so as to not appear knowledgeable or too interested. She had plenty of practice in her life at that, for in London, it was socially perilous to appear interested or interesting. Cultivating an air of insipidity was considered a sign of good breeding by her mother and those of the same way of thinking. When he didn’t continue, Anne said, “You did mention smuggling, didn’t you, sir?”

“What Briggs refers to, my lady,” the other fellow, a tall, thin lanky youth with a soft manner, said, “Is a raid last night, unsuccessful as it turns out. The prevention men again tried to capture some sly smuggling devils, but a fracas of some sort broke out, and the smugglers disappeared.”

“How could they disappear?” Anne’s whole attention was riveted, but she deliberately kept her expression placid, playing with the fingertips of her gloves.

“The whole cliff area is riddled with caves, ma’am.”

“But surely all it takes is to follow the smugglers?”

“’Tis not so simple, for
they—
the smugglers—know where they’re going, while the revenue officers are just guessing, and guessing wrong means a fruitless hunt in the dark. They’ve tried searching the caves in the light of day, but have found little to guide them.”

“This is an old problem, is it not?” Anne asked, glancing from gentleman to gentleman, forgetting to appear uninterested. “Ever since the government imposed heavy duties.”

“Taxes that they require for the protection of our country,” Lieutenant Briggs said, his cheeks going red and his brow furrowed.

Anne shied from any political discussion of the merit of such taxes, and what they were truly being used for. She had heard much about the subject, and knew that in many people’s estimation corruption, royal profligacy and war in Europe had drained the country’s coffers. More revenue was being raised on the backs of those who could least afford it through excise tax, supposedly on luxury items. But were tea and tobacco really luxuries when for some, they were the only pleasures to be had at the end of a long day of labor? Instead of making her true opinion known—and restraining it was a great sacrifice for an outspoken woman—she kept her mind focused on the subject about which she was truly curious. “I’ve heard something about a local ghost.”

“Ah, yes,” the lanky fellow, Captain Carleton, said, “and here we are, the Barbary Ghost.” He indicated an inn, past which they were strolling.

Anne looked up at the sign, and laughed. It was adorned with an exaggerated image of the fellow she had seen the night before, a fellow with a dark beard, turban and ballooning pantaloons, waving a scimitar. Though she had been past the inn a half dozen times in the last two weeks, she had never paid heed to the sign, a woeful example of her preoccupation of late, due to a certain arrogant marquess, whose imperfect excellence lingered in her mind like a haunting melody. Or rather, malady. Distance from him was supposed to be her cure, but the fever still burned.

She turned her mind away from Darkefell. Confessing what she saw the night before to the two officers was out of the question, for it would be tantamount to admitting she was wandering alone in the night; even
her
spotless reputation could not stand such an assault. To do something shocking was one thing; to have that something laid bare for all the world to know about and comment upon, entirely different. “How vivid that depiction,” she said, with a light laugh, and gesture back to the sign they had passed. “Has anyone seen such a creature, really? And how is this related to the smugglers?”

Her companions then told her how the prevention men had witnessed just such an apparition the night before, and not for the first time. In the last few months the ghastly vision, wielding a scimitar and fearful firepower, had several times threatened the excise men. While many thought it a true specter—local farmers refused the revenue officers right-of-way across their land in fear of the apparition coming to get them, for it only seemed to appear when the King’s agents were about—its most recent appearances, sensible folks agreed, had to do with the increase of smuggling accomplished by a particularly clever band of cutthroats known locally as the St. Wyllow Whips.

They had walked on toward Cliff House. Anne fell silent, listening to the two men ramble. She longed for some free time and for Pamela to be busy, because she was intent on scaling the steep pathway down to the sea—the rocky cleft between two bluffs was called a cut in local parlance—to examine the cliff face. There must be some apparatus that hoisted the “ghost,” for she did not for one moment believe in a visible spirit that could float. Pam’s resolute refusal to speak of the smugglers or the ghost, other than her relation of the story of its origins, was disappointing, as was her lack of interest in walking along their own beach. Boring, she said, and too difficult a climb down to the shore for a lady.

Watching the blue-gowned figure strolling ahead of her, Anne reflected that Pamela St. James had altered significantly in the last few years. Pam had visited Anne at Harecross Hall a year before, but had been wan and ailing, recovering from a difficult period of fever. Now she seemed in reasonable health, but infirmity had changed her. She was thinner than before, and indolent. She cared more about bonnets and clothing and flirtation with the officers than she ever had, though, to be fair, Pamela St. James had always enjoyed the art of flirtation. But now her skill had a harder edge, a more desperate flavor.

Did she need to marry? Was she in financial trouble? It had not passed Anne’s notice that Pam and Marcus St. James were as impecunious as ever, not a feather to fly on. Though she had never pried, Anne had always assumed that there was some family money, enough to eke out an existence, but not enough to live comfortably. Marcus’s wages as an officer in the British army would be almost completely offset by his expenses.

The very next day—market day in St. Wyllow—Anne had already decided she’d take steps to add to the household, instead of detract, by purchasing supplies, and ordering necessities, wine, coal, food. It was only fair, for she had more than enough funds and would not see them suffer for her extended visit and the burden of herself, her maid and Wee Robbie.

They approached Cliff House. Marcus and Pam’s rented house was closer to the road than the ocean, but due to the peculiarities of the landscape, the lane to it ambled downhill and around, so the roof of Cliff House was the only part visible from the highway. But as they neared the house, Anne spied a feminine figure sitting on a trunk alongside the highway by the turnoff to the lane descent. Pamela and her officer escorts, some distance ahead of Anne and her attendants, greeted the humble visitor.

Anne shook her head in some dismay, but was not especially surprised. She had expected this arrival at least a week earlier. Hastening her step, she called out, in a cheerful tone, “Darling Lolly … Mama and Grandmama have dispatched you to keep their collective eye on me, have they?”

“Well, my dearest Anne,” Lolly said, cheerily, offering her soft cheek for a kiss, “you must have expected they would, did you not?”

Anne straightened after giving her distant cousin the expected affectionate greeting. “I knew it could happen, but thought from the curt tone of Mama’s reply to my letter informing her of my stay here in Cornwall that she was sufficiently put out by my behavior to ignore me completely for a time. Did she give you any marching orders, beyond coming to Cliff House?”

“Now, my dear, enough time to talk later,” Lolly said, bright-eyed, as she dusted off her traveling dress and stood. She glanced around at the officers. “Please introduce me to your charming companions. I do so take pleasure in uniformed gentlemen, and think no man as handsome as those with epaulettes and gold braid.”

***

The inn was promising in its tidiness, Darkefell decided as he dismounted and handed the reins to a speedy young fellow who had circled the building from the rear, where the stable yard would be. Throwing him a coin, and commanding that his horse, Sunny, be well cared for, the marquess looked up at the garish sign—a Mussulman pirate, for God’s sake—and entered the Barbary Ghost, a low-ceilinged inn like most. He loitered in the taproom, listening to the men jawing over tankards of bitter.

“They ’spect me t’catch the damned fellows, but won’t give me the men to do’t!” a bent and bewhiskered fellow said, puffing on a pipe between words.

“Nouw, Puddicombe,” another fellow said after a long pull on his tankard, wiping froth from his lips with the sleeve of his stained jacket. “T’smugglers are joost gettin’ too clever, ain’t they?”

“Eh, the buggers runned away at a coupla bangs and pops last e’en. T’other excise men get troops; I get farmers wi’ cudgels and scythes.” He shook his head and sprawled in the low-ceilinged inglenook near the fire, smoking and quaffing. “No troops, nor a cutter, nor anything but farmers. Might joost as well face ’em alone.”

“Aye, but you’ve caught some of ’em!” one fellow said.

“Not them the folks hereabouts call the St. Wyllow Whips, and that bastard leader o’ theirs, Lord Brag, or whatever the ’ell they calls ’im.”

Laughter broke out. Some unintelligible jokes were flung back and forth, something about a ghost, and fireworks. Puddicombe’s face got redder and redder, and when he whirled in his seat to yell for more beer, he caught sight of Darkefell and bashed one of his pals on the shoulder. All the men turned, then, and stared, and the remarkable conversation stopped.

When talk resumed, the topic was farming, and they chatted of sowing and reaping. Darkefell glanced around. At that moment a barrel-chested man that he recognized came through to the taproom from a back stockroom.

“Quintrell!” the marquess called.

The man turned and stared at him in the murky taproom. The grimy diamond-paned windows offered only dim light, but enough to recognize the marquess, it seemed, for a smile broadened the publican’s face. “Master Anthony! Or should I say, Milord Darkefell!” He wiped his hands on a bar rag, tossed it aside and bowed to the marquess.

“I remembered that you bought an inn somewhere near St. Ives, and here you are! I hit it right on just my first try. But before we get into proper greetings, do you have a room I might rent from you?”

“Oh, aye, milord,” he said, a smile wreathing his round face. “I’ve a grand room that’ll be yours, if you just give me an hour.”

Once they got the formalities out of the way, and Darkefell had announced that his valet was not to join him, for his secretary would be following to act as his factotum, they settled down to a drink together in the tavernkeeper’s office, a tiny room off the taproom. Quintrell relaxed as it became clear that the marquess was not on his high horse and was just going to be one of the lads for now.

Joseph Quintrell had been, many years before, the late marquess’s equerry on his Cornish estate, some miles away nearer Launceston, close to the Devonshire border. When Darkefell’s father died, he left a generous bequeathal in his will to Quintrell, and with it, the man and his wife bought an inn near her home village of St. Wyllow. It appeared to be a success. The two men spoke of friends departed, and Darkefell offered Quintrell sympathy on his wife’s death some years before. They spoke of the pride of Quintrell’s heart, his son Johnny, now twenty-one, and working for his father.

Then Darkefell got down to the matter of business he wished to discuss, the tenants of Cliff House and their visitor, Lady Anne Addison. Quintrell knew little about the tenants, except that it was a brother and sister, Captain Marcus and Miss Pamela St. James, the captain billeted with his regiment near St. Ives, but was in St. Wyllow every free moment, staying at Cliff House when he had leave.

“This Captain St. James … he married?”

“No,” Quintrell said, with a sparkle in his eye, “in fact, quite the opposite. He’s the kind ’oo’s cut a wide swath through the females o’ this village.”

“What do you mean?” Darkefell asked, feeling a knot of anxiety building in his stomach.