The Gun Ketch (40 page)

"Of course," he said, cringing inside.

Christ on a crutch, she has children, he thought! Here I've been bulling her all over the shop, and Caroline ... what of my child? Damme, but I can be such a bloody
fooll

"Here, Wyannie," he said, pressing a crown into her palm.

"Lord o' mercy, Alan, ya don' need t'gimme dot much!" Wyannie protested. "I tol' ya, I ain't a who'! Two shillin keep me fine 'til ya get back. An' ya don'
need
t'gimme ev'n dot, luv."

"Five shillings keeps you better," he said gallantly, smiling in spite of his sudden chagrin, and knowing he'd never see her again in this life, if he had any willpower left. "Dresses you prettier, and takes care of those sprouts of yours the better, hey? Widowhood is hard any place you are. And you're much too young and pretty to be a widow in need."

"Ya sweet," she warmed to him, and accepted the coin. She gave him one last fervid embrace, one last series of open-mouthed and moist kisses. "Walk me t'de road, like a gen'mun, hey, Cap'um?"

He saw her down the hall, onto the veranda, where she retrieved her straw baskets and produce bags, doffed his hat and gave her a bow which made her smile so widely that she dimpled as she curtsied to him, and watched her stroll away loose-hipped and proud with a profound sense of relief, yet a smile of pleasant reverie on his face. Even if Arthur Ballard was watching his antics.

"Well, shall we stroll over to the magistrate's, Arthur?"

"Aye, sir."

They set off down the single street Clarence Town could boast, the afternoon swelter of a late August day only slightly tempered by the sea's breeze, kicking up small clouds of sandy dust with each step.

"Uhm, Alan," Arthur said at last. "Sir, I... uhm."

"Yes, Arthur?" Alan asked, certain that this was not to be an official matter.

"Damme, sir," Ballard cursed for the second time in Alan's recollection. "I know it's not my place. Or concern, how you conduct your personal affairs, sir."

"No, it isn't, Arthur," Alan replied. "Yet
...?"

"I mean to say, though, sir. Well, there're ... you are married, sir. There're vows and such," Ballard strangled out. "And to such
a fine
young lady as your dear Caroline, sir. Were the... uhm... had you been with a white woman, sir ... dash it all, Alan, it seems such an incomprehensible slip for you to make, sir, with Caroline waiting for you in Nassau. With child! And to lay with a Cuffy slattern ..."

"A handsome young widow, Arthur, with children of her own," Lewrie stated calmly.

Damme, but he's a priggish young swine, he thought!

"Not a year over twenty, she is. Proud, free, and independent. For your information, she did it for free, Arthur. And she was damn' good, let me tell you," Lewrie said, his perverse streak standing up on both hind legs and baying the moon down. "She's a lonely widow, and I am a weak and foolish man. We crossed hawses once, and like as not, we'll never come bulwark-to-bulwark again."

"I understand your loneliness, Alan," Ballard stuttered. "How worried you've been without news from... from Nassau."

"Don't you ever get lonely, Arthur?" Alan inquired. "Doesn't a craving for abandon come over you so powerful of a sudden that any old drab doxy'd do you? Don't you ache to put the leg over?"

"I hope to set my aim a bit higher than mere rutting, sir," Lieutenant Ballard rejoined primly. "I'd wish someday for... well, sir, for some bright and lovely young lady as fine as your wife, sir."

"Yet you turned your nose up at Elizabeth Mustin."

"A bit too frippish and ... flibberti-gibbet for my lights, sir. I hope you do not take that the wrong way, seeing as how you and your wife set such store by her company, sir, but ..." He shrugged.

"I don't know why I care for you as much as I do, Arthur," Alan chuckled, clapping him on the back. "You're shy as a spanked puppy in women's company. You'd lie like a butcher's dog next to a handsome bit of quim as yon Wyannie, and never sniff the beef! You don't drink but a bottle a day, bad days or good! And you're as stiff-arsed as a parson in
a poor
parish."

"True, sir," Ballard grimaced, rueful at the truth.

"But you've wit, and you've sense, and damme if you're not right about most things," Alan allowed, laughing out loud. "I,use mine for jollities. And I'd go dashing off on a tear without your advice half the time. Begrudge me my faults, Arthur. Mind you, I'm not asking you for forgiveness, Reverend Ballard. That's between me and Our Lords Commissioners for the Execution of the Office of Lord High Admiral of this world, and the next. Takes all kinds. I am most often one of the sorry kind, and when it comes to Caroline, damned fortunate. Made me feel good, Wyannie did. She and this mysterious note of yours have put me in a fettle such as I've not felt in months, sir! As my old Captain Lilycrop would say, feagued me so well as a lump o' ginger up a prad's rump! Ought to
issue
girls like her. Good for morale."

"I see, sir."

"No, you don't, you're only making noises like you do," Lewrie cajoled him. "Wish to God you did. Damme, but you take life serious, Arthur! God knows sailors don't mean much by their sins, when they do get the opportunity. Precarious as we get Life, we're a pack o' hymn-singin'
castrati
compared to landsmen. Try putting a foot wrong, now and again, Arthur. Go on a tear, why don't you?"

"Takes all kinds, as you say, sir," Ballard replied, grinning shyly in spite of himself. "I'll not meddle again, sir. Sorry."

"The devil you won't," Alan chortled. "And I may bark to pin your ears back, but remember I mean nothing by it And if you care enough about me to warn me when I'm about to do something lunatic, then that's what friends are for. As oddly matched as they sometimes are."

"Aye, aye, sir," Ballard nodded. "Now, pray God we've good news at last!"

The letter was from Col. Andrew Deveaux, one of the major planters on Cat Island, informing them that he held mail for them at his mansion near Port Howe on the southern coast, mail sent directly to him from Nassau by his old friend from South Carolina, Mr. Peyton Boudreau.

Upon that elating news,
Alacrity
was up-anchor and out of the harbour at Clarence Town by dawn the next morning, beating into the nor'east Trades for Port Howe.

There was one narrow break in the coral reefs surrounding Port Howe, with breakers lazily spuming on either hand, and behind the reef was a shallow port ill-suited for anything much larger than
Alacrity.
"They ought to drop the 'E'," Lewrie commented once they were come to anchor, with the courses handed and being lashed secure.

"Sir?" Ballard smiled.

"Call Port Howe H-O-W," Alan grimaced.
"How
the devil a ship may enter without wrecking herself is beyond me. And where are the day-marks, and the warning beacon we erected in May, I ask you?"

"I have no idea, sir."

"Carry on, Mister Ballard. I'm going
ashore!"

He was rowed to the town's one long pier, debarked onto a lower landing stage atop a catamaran work platform, and almost ran down the pier for the tiny village. A man on horseback waited for him at the shore end, with another mount held by a groom near at hand.

"Lieutenant Alan Lewrie?" the man asked. "That is the
Alacrity
yonder, sir?"

"She is, and I am, sir. And you are?"

"Andrew Deveaux, sir. Delighted to make your acquaintance," he said, springing down from his saddle as lithe as a cavalryman. Deveaux was a rather small and lean fellow, shorter than Alan. His face was fox-lean, with a pointy patrician nose, almost a woman's soft mouth, large, liquid brown eyes, and a smallish, tapering ball of a chin. He wore two-tone black and tan top boots, white sailcloth breeches, and a loosely flowing silk shirt, his face shaded by a very wide-brimmed woven straw hat. They shook hands, muttering the expected "your servant, sir," and that's when Alan discovered the steel in the man, for his grip was stronger than a fencing master's.

"Didn't think you'd come to Port Howe," Deveaux commented. "I was prepared to ride to The Bight on the western coast, if necessary."

"Alacrity
is shallow-draught enough to enter, sir, so I thought this would save time. You've been watching for me?"

"For nigh a month, sir. Here, sir, do you ride? My groom has a mount for you, and my coach can be fetched if you do not."

"I ride, sir. Thankee."

A black servant brought a fine gelding forward and held reins while Alan got aboard. They set off down a sandy track between thick clusters of sea-grape trees for his plantation house to the west. Alan was struck by how young Deveaux was, how unremarkable.

"This is quite an honour, Colonel Deveaux," Alan said. "To meet you, a hero of the Revolution, and the man who recaptured Nassau from the Dons." Another of those frail but game scrappers? he wondered.

"Neck-or-nothing," Deveaux shrugged. "But bloodless. People do make much more of it than it really was. I am quite honoured to meet you, sir. I heard in the Nassau paper of your feats at Conch Bar, and Walker's Cay."

"Well, Walker's Cay, sir..." Alan grumbled sadly, then sat up and looked back towards the harbour. "Sir, we put up day-marks and some warning beacons earlier. They're gone now. Do you have any ... ?"

"Oh, those!" Deveaux hooted, throwing his head back in delight. "Damme, sir, do you not know that before the war, a third of Bahamian revenues came from shipwrecking and salvage? Blackbeard, Henry Morgan ... Port Howe was one of their old haunts, so the locals tore down your marks the minute you were out of sight and moved 'em ashore for lures, to make the town look bigger at night. Needed the timber for buildings, too. They light the place up like a major city, put lights in the harbour so it appears deep-draught ships are anchored in Port Howe, in hopes of luring the foolhardy onto the reefs, so they may strip the wreck. You got off easy, sir. I'm told a Navy officer formerly in these islands was almost lynched for even
suggesting
he'd erect a lighthouse on Great Exuma!"

"Worse than Cornishmen, I do declare," Lewrie smiled, surprised all over again in spite of his supposed worldliness.

"Indeed. We get so little news here on Cat Island. What about Walker's Cay, sir? Peyton writes that all talk of suits and such have been dropped long ago. Did you... ?"

"Dropped?" Alan cried. "I had no idea, sir. I've not had even a single word from Nassau in six months!"

"Not even from your wife?" Deveaux frowned. "Pardon me, but he also wrote that she was most greatly upset that she had not heard from
you,
Lieutenant Lewrie."

"She is well, Colonel Deveaux?" Alan demanded with alarm. "Did he say more? She's with child, and I've been beside myself with fear!"

"He did state she was expecting, and that he and his wife were perturbed that her worries about your silence would affect her health. But she is well, Lieutenant Lewrie, he did assure me of that. She had begged him to discover what had happened to you, and why you hadn't responded to her letters."

"Damme, sir, I
got
no letters! Nothing!" Alan shouted. "No one aboard
Alacrity's
had a single thing, except for our purser, and only inventories of supplies sent out to sustain us, which do not require an answer. I've sent request after request to my squadron commander, and dozens of letters to Caroline, and it's like dropping a stone down a wellshaft and never hearing even a splash. I feared... you cannot
imagine
what I have feared, sir!"

"Well, rest easy," Deveaux assured him. "There's a small bag of correspondence for you and your ship, sir. And a thick packet of letters from your wife. Peyton could not believe you would ignore her so callously. He stated in his note to me that he suspects your superiors are withholding your mail to and fro."

"I know Commodore Garvey was wroth with me over Walker's Cay and John Finney's trial. He sent us down here out of anger. But I never thought he'd be
that
vindictive to me!"

"You've written him often, then?" Deveaux demanded.

"Weekly, sir. We're running out of all manner of stores except for food and drink. Sir, if this goes on, my ship'll be crippled for lack of new spars, rope and sailcloth. Yet, without specific orders, I am barred from returning to the Navy dockyard at Nassau."

"And I trust you've saved a fair copy of your every plea, sir?" Deveaux hinted slyly. "As a precaution for the future?"

"Aye, sir, that's customary. And in black ink, too," Alan had to grin as he said it. "But why would he interrupt my mail? How can a man be so spiteful?"

"We'll discuss that later," Colonel Deveaux told him. "Once we get to my house, you read your letters. And fill yourself in on what has been happening in Nassau in your absence. Then we'll talk more."

Caroline was alive! And well!

He went to her letters first, reading the one with the most recent date to assure himself of her existence and her safety. She wrote that she was blooming big as a mare about to foal, the baby was kicking lustily, and that she carried low, which the physician and midwife she had engaged considered signs of a man-child. Except for the usual complaints and pains, the clumsiness and heaviness, she reassured him that her confinement was not too hard, although she missed the pleasures of riding, gardening, and doing her own cooking; yet, between Betty Mustin and Wyonnie (Lew-rie flushed with remorse as that similar name appeared) she had no difficulties.